Studies of the 2018/Mars Year 34 Planet-Encircling Dust Storm

Abstract

Mars' planet-encircling or global dust storms (GDSs) are an iconic and enigmatic feature of the Red Planet. Occurring every few Mars Years (MYs), on average, they are a stochastic process in the otherwise largely repeatable annual cycle of martian weather. In 2018 (MY 34 in the calendar of Clancy et al. [2000], https://doi.org/10.1029/1999je001089), an international fleet of spacecraft-six orbiters and two rovers-observed the most recent GDS. This introduction and the articles of this special collection describe the evolution and impacts of the storm from the surface to the exosphere, compare this storm to previous GDSs, identify new phenomena never previously seen in such storms, and attempt to determine how and when GDSs develop.