Tag Archives: snow

HiRISE: Frost-covered dunes

Posted on April 1, 2019 by rburnham

Frost-covered dunes. Sprinkled with hopes and dreams, no less. This is a relatively new monitoring site that seems to have heavy carbon-dioxide snowfall. HiRISE Picture of the Day archive [More at links]

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HiRISE: Spring frost on a cold world

Posted on November 28, 2018 by rburnham

Winter on Mars comes with a blanket of carbon dioxide snow. During the spring “thaw,” this snow evaporates into the atmosphere, lingering longest in the shallow depressions such as the troughs of polygon patterned ground. Enhanced color shows the carbon … Continue reading →

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Early Mars: Arid, with occasional snow or rain

Posted on October 18, 2018 by rburnham

[Editor’s note: From a paper by Yo Matsubara, Alan Howard, and Ross Irwin recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.] Constraints on the Noachian paleoclimate of the martian highlands from landscape evolution modeling Evidences show that Mars was once wetter … Continue reading →

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Water-ice cliffs found in Mars’ mid-latitudes

Posted on January 11, 2018 by rburnham

Researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have found eight sites where thick deposits of ice beneath Mars’ surface are exposed in faces of eroding slopes. These eight scarps, with slopes as steep as 55 degrees, reveal new information about … Continue reading →

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HiRISE: A world of snowy dunes

Posted on August 23, 2017 by rburnham

It is spring in the Northern hemisphere when we took this image. Over the winter, snow and ice have inexorably covered the dunes. Unlike on Earth, this snow and ice is carbon dioxide, better known to us as dry ice. … Continue reading →

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Blizzards on Mars strike at night

Posted on August 22, 2017 by rburnham

Mars researchers have long thought that because the water content of the martian atmosphere today is so low, any clouds that form will produce only modest precipitation. For example, in 2008 the Mars Phoenix lander detected falling snow from a … Continue reading →

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THEMIS: Snow & ice fill crater in martian Arctic

Posted on November 30, 2016 by rburnham

THEMIS Image of the Day, November 30, 2016. This VIS image shows part of the north polar cap. This image is along the cap margin. The buried remnants of an impact crater are visible in the bottom half of the … Continue reading →

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HiRISE: Snowy dunes on another planet

Posted on November 23, 2015 by rburnham

Snowy dunes on another planet. Beautiful Mars series.

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Did lake-effect storms make Martian snowbelts?

Posted on October 15, 2011 by rburnham

Numerous places on Mars show erosion by precipitation, whether as rainfall or runoff from melting snow. The precipitation could have come from a thicker atmosphere or a temporary boost in atmospheric temperature and density following a large impact. Both scenarios … Continue reading →

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