Springtime North Polar Dust Storms
As on the Earth, many severe storms brew in the martian polar regions.
Here, temperature contrasts between the cold carbon dioxide
("dry ice") seasonal frost cap and the warm ground adjacent
to it--combined with a flow of cool polar air evaporating off the cap--sweeps
up dust and funnels it into swirling dust storms along the cap edge. The
dust storms shown here were observed during the recent northern
spring by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) in
May 2002. The picture is a mosaic of daily global images from the MOC
wide angle cameras. The north polar cap is the bright, frosty
surface at the top.
Images Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
Caption by: K. S. Edgett and M. C. Malin, MSSS
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