Mars may perhaps look resemble a dusty, cold, and dry orb, but in certain cases, its atmosphere can also turn out extremely aggressive, unexpected attacks of snowy weather, especially after nightfall, claimed the new research paper. A new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience has revealed that the mysterious Red Planet has been experiencing the tumultuous whiteouts or snowstorms during the night time. The first-of-its-kind study has completely changed the manner we used to know and understand Mars and its atmosphere.
According to the research, conducted by a team of scientists from the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France, When the Sun sets down and the temperatures of the Martian atmosphere plunge, the Red Planet starts experiencing sadistic and incredibly intense blizzards, turned out by active streams of wind. This is the very first time that an experiment has revealed the presence of the snowstorms or water-ice micro-bursts on Mars.
Scientists, using the data sourced by NASA’s Phoenix Lander, collected in 2008, alongside the observations, gathered from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, measured that the snowstorms on Mars do not just crop up in a sluggish, steady process – as previously had been expected because of the skinny Martian atmosphere. Rather, the Red Planet has been experiencing something much more violent and spectacular. As the researchers revealed, the frenzied snowstorms on the Red Planet are capable of teeming down the small chunks of ice on the way to the Mars surface and are causing dramatic events after sunset.
As claimed by the researchers, the snowstorms are being triggered by radiative cooling, in which the heat could quickly break out the Martian atmosphere, and that particular hotness in the arctic Martian clouds can plunge at the speed of as much as 4 degrees Celsius per hour. The findings of the study are clearly indicating that there are still a lot of things and features about the Red Planet that we don’t know and the atmospheric conditions of the Mars is still poorly understood by us.
The findings, led by Aymeric Spiga, a planetary scientist from the University Pierre and Marie Curie in France, has no doubt given the world a new insight into the climatic patterns of the Red Planet, which is expected pave new paths for the future explorers, attempting to colonizing the planet.
