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Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms

The atmosphere of Mars is strongly affected by the spatial and temporal variability of airborne dust. However, global dust variability within a sol (Martian day) is still poorly understood. Although short-term dynamic processes are crucial, detailed comparisons of simulated diurnal variations are li...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wu, Zhaopeng, Li, Tao, Zhang, Xi, Li, Jing, Cui, Jun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6992627/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32001703
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14510-x
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author Wu, Zhaopeng
Li, Tao
Zhang, Xi
Li, Jing
Cui, Jun
author_facet Wu, Zhaopeng
Li, Tao
Zhang, Xi
Li, Jing
Cui, Jun
author_sort Wu, Zhaopeng
collection PubMed
description The atmosphere of Mars is strongly affected by the spatial and temporal variability of airborne dust. However, global dust variability within a sol (Martian day) is still poorly understood. Although short-term dynamic processes are crucial, detailed comparisons of simulated diurnal variations are limited by relatively sparse observations. Here, we report the discovery of ubiquitous, strong diurnal tides of dust in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars. Driven by the westward-propagating migrating diurnal thermal tide, zonally distributed dust fronts slosh back and forth in a wide latitudinal range of up to 40° within one sol during major dust storms. Dust tides—tidal transport of dust in this way—rapidly transport heat and constituents meridionally, allowing moist air near the summer pole to be rapidly transported to lower latitudes during the night, where it then can be lifted by daytime deep convection and contribute to hydrogen escape from Mars during global dust storms.
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spelling pubmed-69926272020-02-03 Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms Wu, Zhaopeng Li, Tao Zhang, Xi Li, Jing Cui, Jun Nat Commun Article The atmosphere of Mars is strongly affected by the spatial and temporal variability of airborne dust. However, global dust variability within a sol (Martian day) is still poorly understood. Although short-term dynamic processes are crucial, detailed comparisons of simulated diurnal variations are limited by relatively sparse observations. Here, we report the discovery of ubiquitous, strong diurnal tides of dust in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars. Driven by the westward-propagating migrating diurnal thermal tide, zonally distributed dust fronts slosh back and forth in a wide latitudinal range of up to 40° within one sol during major dust storms. Dust tides—tidal transport of dust in this way—rapidly transport heat and constituents meridionally, allowing moist air near the summer pole to be rapidly transported to lower latitudes during the night, where it then can be lifted by daytime deep convection and contribute to hydrogen escape from Mars during global dust storms. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC6992627/ /pubmed/32001703 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14510-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Wu, Zhaopeng
Li, Tao
Zhang, Xi
Li, Jing
Cui, Jun
Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms
title Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms
title_full Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms
title_fullStr Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms
title_full_unstemmed Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms
title_short Dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the Martian atmosphere during major dust storms
title_sort dust tides and rapid meridional motions in the martian atmosphere during major dust storms
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6992627/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32001703
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14510-x
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