Monitoring Atmospheric Dust Spring Activity at High Southern Latitudes on Mars using OMEGA

Abstract

This article presents a monitoring of the atmospheric dust in the south polar region during spring of martian year 27. Our goal is to contribute to identifying the regions where the dust concentration in the atmosphere shows specific temporal patterns, for instance high, variable, and on the rise due to lifting or transport mechanisms. This identification is performed in relation with the seasonal ice regression. Based on a phenomenological examination of the previous results, hypothesis regarding the origin of aerosol activity of the southern polar region are proposed. This is of paramount importance since local dust storms generated in this region sometimes grow to global proportions. T