Source: Earth Sky News

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft has been monitoring dust storms brewing at Mars’ north pole over the last month, and watching as the storms disperse toward the equator. The spacecraft observed at least eight different storms at the edge of the ice cap between May 22 and June 10, 2019, which formed and dissipated very quickly, between one and three days.

It’s currently spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and water-ice clouds and small dust-lifting events are frequently observed along the edge of the seasonally retreating ice cap. Local and regional storms lasting for a few days or weeks and confined to a small area are common on Mars, but at their most severe they can engulf the entire planet, as experienced last year in a global storm that circled the planet for many months.

Both Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed that when the dust storms reached the large volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, orographic clouds – water ice clouds driven by the influence of a volcano’s leeward slope on the air flow – that had been developing, started to evaporate as a result of the air mass being heated by the influx of dust.

These regional dust storms only last a few days. The planet’s circulation moves the elevated dust and spreads it out into a thin haze in the lower atmosphere. Some traces of dust and clouds remained in the volcanic province into mid-June.

Look out for dust storms in the daily images provided by the ESA’s Mars webcam, on Flickr and Twitter.

Bottom line: Images of dust storms at the Mars north pole, take by ESA’s Mars Express.