Dr. Nicholas Heavens will be presenting the following research on dusty deep convection and Mars’s 2018 global dust storm:
Mars is a dry and cold global desert with an active dust cycle. Chief among the drivers of dust transport on Mars are the global dust storms that occur every few years. These storms shape important geologic records as well as present potentially fatal hazards to robotic and future human explorers. Predicting when these storms will occur, how they evolve, and the exact hazards experienced within them are all outstanding scientific problems. This talk will tell the story of the 2018 global dust storm through the lenses of the satellites and rovers that observed it and especially consider the role of Mars’s unusual analog to the Earth’s thunderstorms: dusty deep convection.