NASA awards grant to study Mars weather

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency has awarded a Texas A&M University professor a grant to analyze and forecast Martian weather.

Although there are some doubts as to whether Mars has "weather," the planet definitely has clouds, drastically low temperatures and dust storms, said grant recipient Istvan Szunyogh, a Texas A&M professor of atmospheric sciences.

"Planet-encircling Martian dust storms, which occur every two to four Mars years, can cover the whole planet with dust for months," said Szunyogh, who is working with colleagues from the University of Maryland and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., to forecast Martian weather.

"All weather forecasts, including those on TV, are based on model forecasts of the different physical parameters of the Earth's atmosphere such as temperature, wind and pressure," Szunyogh said. "The main goal of our project is to explore the possibility of obtaining accurate quantitative estimates of these parameters of the Martian atmosphere."