UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —Steven Greybush, associate professor of meteorology at Penn State, will explore features of Martian weather from the perspective of spacecraft data, computer simulations and traveling weather systems that give rise to dust storms in his talk "Exploring Martian Atmosphere Weather with Spacecraft and Simulations” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 13. The talk, which is free and open to the public, takes place in 112 Walker Building. 

The atmosphere of Mars has some weather features that are remarkably similar to the Earth, such as traveling weather systems with cold fronts, planetary scale circulations, jet stream winds, dust devils and water ice clouds. The planet also has several quite unique features such as extreme day-night temperature contrasts that excite thermal tides, CO2 ice caps and clouds, and dust storms that can grow from continent scales to cover the entire planet for weeks. Martian weather can have extreme consequences for exploration missions as seen in 2018 when a global dust storm led to the demise of the solar powered rover, Opportunity. 

About the EarthTalks speaker series

Greybush’s talk is part of EESI’s spring 2023 EarthTalks speaker series, “Exploration of our Solar System.” We now live in the golden age of solar system exploration. With a dozen NASA missions currently in development — as well as spacecraft actively on Mars, near Jupiter, and in the Kuiper belt — the current scale of mission activity is unprecedented and brings forth a new era of comparative study of varied worlds at the systems level. The series is intended to provide a venue for the expansion of participant’s horizons into our solar system.  

The EESI EarthTalks series is supported by Penn State’s Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. Talks are also available via Zoom. For more information about the spring 2023 series, visit the EarthTalks web page.