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Published August 2004 | public
Journal Article

Interannual variability of Mars global dust storms: an example of self-organized criticality?

Abstract

Previous simulations of martian global dust storms with a simple low-order model showed the desired interannual variability of storms if one of the model parameters—the threshold wind speed for starting saltation and lifting dust from the surface—was finely tuned. In this paper we show that the fine-tuning of this parameter could be the result of negative feedback in which processes associated with global dust storms raise the threshold and small-scale processes like dust devils, which are active in years between the storms, lower the threshold.

Additional Information

© 2004 Elsevier Inc. Received 22 December 2003; revised 26 March 2004. Available online 2 June 2004. A.P.I. was supported by the Mars Fundamental Research Program of NASA. We thank the referees, Francois Forget and Robert Haberle, for useful suggestions.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023