Related papers: Circadian rhythm of dune-field activity
Aims. An asymmetric dust cloud was detected around the Moon by the Lunar Dust Experiment on board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission. We investigate the dynamics of the grains that escape the Moon and their…
Dust production is one of the more curious phenomena observed in massive binary systems with interacting winds. The high temperatures, UV photon flux and violent shocks should destroy any dust grains that condense. However, in some extreme…
Sediment transport along the surface drives geophysical phenomena as diverse as wind erosion and dune formation. The main length-scale controlling the dynamics of sediment erosion and deposition is the saturation length $L_\mathrm{s}$,…
We demonstrate the feasibility of studying dunes in a laboratory experiment. It is shown that an initial sand pile, under a wind flow carrying sand, flattens and gets a shape recalling barchan dunes. An evolution law is proposed for the…
The atmospheric boundary layer undergoes significant changes throughout a diurnal cycle, affecting wind turbine performance and wakes in wind farms. Wind farm Large Eddy Simulations (LES) under such conditions provide rich datasets to study…
The recent discoveries of terrestrial exoplanets and super-Earths extending over a broad range of orbital and physical parameters suggest that these planets will span a wide range of climatic regimes. Characterization of the atmospheres of…
The spatio-temporal evolution of a downsized model for a desert dune is observed experimentally in a narrow water flow channel. A particle tracking method reveals that the migration speed of the model dune is one order of magnitude smaller…
Transverse dunes appear in regions of mainly unidirectional wind and high sand availability. A dune model is extended to two dimensional calculation of the shear stress. It is applied to simulate dynamics and morphology of transverse dunes…
Global dust storms are the most thermodynamically significant dust events on Mars. They are produced from the combination of multiple local and regional lifting events and maintained by positive radiative-dynamic feedbacks. The most recent…
Wind-blown sand, or 'saltation,' creates sand dunes, erodes geological features, and could be a significant source of dust aerosols on Mars. Moreover, the electrification of sand and dust in saltation, dust storms, and dust devils could…
We present simulations of atmospheres of Earth-like aquaplanets that are tidally locked to their star, that is, planets whose orbital period is equal to the rotation period about their spin axis, so that one side always faces the star and…
Barchans are dunes of high mobility which have a crescent shape and propagate under conditions of unidirectional wind. However, sand dunes only appear above a critical size, which scales with the saturation distance of the sand flux [P.…
Desert surfaces are typically non uniform, with individual sand dunes generally surrounded by gravel or non-erodible beds. Similarly, beaches vary in composition and moisture that enhances cohesion between the grains. These bed…
Starting from the physics on the grain scale, we develop a simple continuum description of aeolian sand transport. Beyond popular mean-field models, but without sacrificing their computational efficiency, it accounts for both dominant grain…
Emission of dust up to a few micrometer in size by impacts of sand grains during saltation is thought to be one source of dust within the Martian atmosphere. To study this dust fraction, we carried out laboratory impact experiments. Small…
Global and mesoscale models represent the background (slowly varying) winds on Mars, but short timescale wind variability is not explicitly represented. The local wind erosion and dust deposition model can be useful for more accurate local…
We present a minimal model for the formation and migration of aeolian sand dunes. It combines a perturbative description of the turbulent wind velocity field above the dune with a continuum saltation model that allows for saturation…
Wind-blown sand, or "saltation", ejects dust aerosols into the atmosphere, creates sand dunes, and erodes geological features. We present a comprehensive numerical model of steady-state saltation that, in contrast to most previous studies,…
We inquire into the morphodynamics of barchans under seasonal flows. For that, we carried out grain-scale numerical computations of a subaqueous barchan exposed to two-directional flows, and we varied the angle and frequency of…
We study the radial and vertical stability of dust grains launched with all charge-to-mass ratios at arbitrary distances from rotating planets with complex magnetic fields. We show that the aligned dipole magnetic field model analyzed by…