Two decades of Mars images reveal fast moving dust devils and stronger winds
by Erica Marchand
Paris, France (SPX) Oct 09, 2025
Combing 20 years of Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter imagery, ESA-led researchers cataloged 1,039 dust devils to show how surface winds loft and transport dust across Mars. Published in Science Advances, the work indicates peak near-surface winds are much faster than previously thought and refines models of Martian weather and climate.
The open catalogue, available is online, aggregates locations for all 1,039 events and motion vectors for 373 of them. Clustering highlights known source regions such as Amazonis Planitia, while detections span the planet, including volcanic terrains and cratered landscapes.
By tracking displacement between image channels, the team measured translation speeds up to 44 m/s, or 158 km/h. Although Mars’s thin air reduces dynamic pressure, such faster-than-forecast winds imply more efficient dust lifting in many regions than current global circulation models predict.
Seasonal and diurnal patterns emerge. Dust devils occur most frequently in local spring and summer and typically during late morning to early afternoon, peaking between about 11:00 and 14:00 local solar time. The statistics closely mirror dust-devil climatology observed in arid regions on Earth.
The study trained a neural network to detect dust devils in Mars Express images acquired since 2004 and ExoMars CaSSIS images since 2016. For Mars Express, up to nine staggered channels captured small time offsets that, once considered imaging noise, enabled precise motion estimation. CaSSIS’s longer inter-channel delays extended measurable track lengths.
“Dust devils make the normally invisible wind visible,” said Valentin. “By measuring their speed and direction of travel we have started mapping the wind all over Mars’s surface. This was impossible before because we didn’t have enough data to make this kind of measurement on a global scale.”
These wind measurements sharpen landing-site environmental forecasts and mission operations planning, including solar panel dust management for rovers. ESA notes the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover is planned to land in 2030, outside the planet’s global dust storm season.
“It’s great to see researchers using Mars Express and ExoMars TGO for totally unexpected research,” said Colin Wilson, ESA project scientist for both missions. “Dust affects everything on Mars – from local weather conditions to how well we can take images from orbit. It’s difficult to understate the importance of the dust cycle.”
Research Report:Dust Devil Migration Patterns Reveal Strong Near-surface Winds across Mars
Open Catalogue:Dust Devil Migration Patterns Reveal Strong Near-surface Winds across Mars
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