Physics Commons^™

On The Relationship Between Dust Devil Radii And Heights, Brian Jackson

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The influence of dust devils on the martian atmosphere depends on their capacity to loft dust, which depends on their wind profiles and footprint on the martian surface, i.e., on their radii, ��. Previous work suggests the wind profile depends on a devil’s thermodynamic efficiency, which scales with its height, ℎ. However, the precise mechanisms that set a dust devil’s radius have remained unclear. Combining previous work with simple assumptions about angular momentum conservation in dust devils predicts that �� ∝ ℎ^1∕2, and a model fit to observed radii and heights from a survey of martian dust devils …