Still image from a movie clip showing a global map of Mars with atmospheric changes from Feb. 18, 2017, through March 6, 2017, a period when two regional-scale dust storms appeared. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A regional dust storm currently swelling on Mars follows unusually closely on one that blossomed less than 2 weeks earlier and is now dissipating, as seen in daily global weather monitoring by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Images from the orbiter’s wide-angle Mars Color Imager (MARCI) show each storm growing in the Acidalia area of northern Mars, then blowing southward and exploding to sizes bigger than the United States after reaching the southern hemisphere.
That development path is a common pattern for generating regional dust storms during spring and summer in Mars’ south...
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