How do dust storms form on Mars?
This is a really good question. It was thought for a little while that dust storms where started by dust devils. Dust devils are small tornado like vortices that pick up a lot of dust and put it in to the atmosphere. So it was thought that there was an increase in the dust devil activity and that started the dust storms. This is not actually the case. At leased we don;t think so any more. The real answer is still a mystery, but it has a lot to do with an increase in wind speeds and atmospheric pressure. There may not be a single thing that we can point to and blame for starting the dust storms. But they are interesting to say the leased.
