Feb 02, 2026
3 min read
The study finds that local dust storms push water vapor up to 80 kilometers high in the middle of boreal summer, a behavior not predicted by climate models and capable of significantly increasing hydrogen emissions into space...
A team from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and the University of Tokyo revealed that a local dust storm pushes water vapor up to 80 kilometers in the air in the middle of the boreal summer, a behavior not predicted by climate models and that can significantly increase the escape of hydrogen into space.
The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and the University of Tokyo have shown for the first time that an unusual and intense dust storm on a local scale was able to drive the transport of water in the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere in the northern hemisphere summer, when this process was not considered relevant.
The work, published in the journal Communication: Earth & Environment, provides new insight into the role of these amazing components in the evolution of the planet.
The current image of Mars as a barren, hostile desert belies the history its surface reveals.Canals, water-altered minerals and other geological relics suggest that the Red Planet was a wetter, more dynamic world in its early days.Reconstructing how this water-rich environment disappeared remains one of the great challenges of planetary science.Although there are many known processes that could explain some of this loss, the fate of much of Martian water remains unknown.
Now this discovery reveals the impact of this type of storm on the climate evolution of the planet and opens a new way of understanding how Mars lost much of its water over time, says Adrian Brines of IAA-CSIC, co-principal investigator of the study.
One of the keys to know how much water Mars has lost is to measure how much hydrogen has escaped in the atmosphere, since the material is released quickly when water was destroyed in the atmosphere.The current mismains showed a lot of water to be lost for bildren years, enough to cover you the man before hundreds of hundred meters.
Like Earth, Mars has four seasons because its tilt axis is similar.“However, its orbit is more elliptical, so in some years the planet is closer to the Sun and receives more energy,” Brines explains.Combined with the difference in land elevation between the two hemispheres, which is lower in the north than in the south, “makes summers in the southern hemisphere much warmer and more active than summers in the northern hemisphere,” the expert explains.
In this case, in the southern hemisphere — or in the southern summer — the atmosphere is dusty and hot, which encourages the vapor to rise to higher layers, where the sun's rays break it up and allow the hydrogen to escape into the atmosphere.In summer, the water is limited to a low level and the loss is small.This seasonal cycle makes the southern summer the first period of water loss on Mars, a process that repeats every year, is important for the transformation of the Red Planet.
This new study, now led by the IAA-CSIC, found an unusual increase in water vapor in the Martian middle atmosphere due to an unusual dust storm during the northern hemisphere summer of Martian year 37 (2022-2023 on Earth).In 1955, Martian years began to be counted, and for the first time it was possible to measure the position of Mars in its orbit with sufficient precision to use that moment as a reference.Since Mars takes about twice as long as Earth to orbit the Sun, the Martian year 37, taking 1955 as a reference point, roughly corresponds to the period 2021-2023 on Earth's calendar.
The discovery was made by combining data from the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) of ESA's ExoMars mission (2016) and its NOMAD instrument - in the IAA-CSIC group of scientists involved - with observations from other major missions in Mars orbit, such as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbit (M) and Mission.
"Thanks to the continuous and systematic monitoring of the observations and the ideal computer tools of the IAA-CSIC, we were able to study not only the vertical distribution of water vapor, but also the distribution of dust in the atmosphere, the formation of water ice clouds and the release of hydrogen in outer space for this type of atmospheric study," Adrián explained.
The combination of continuous observations and the IAA-CSIC analytical instrument allows us to image the distribution of water vapor and dust, as well as cloud formation and hydrogen escape into space.
In this case, an unusual sandstorm suddenly resulted in a very intense eruption of water vapor, reaching heights of 60 to 80 km, especially in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. At these altitudes, the amount of water was up to 10 times higher than usual, a phenomenon that had not been seen before in the Martian era and is not predicted by current climate models.
There is no excess of water vapour: it was detected simultaneously in all longitudes, showing that the water was rapidly distributed around the globe.After a few weeks the amount of dust in the air returned to a good level and as a result water vapor again accumulated on the ground.
The phenomenon is not limited to the central atmosphere.Independent observations from the EMM and MRO missions showed that, soon after, the amount of hydrogen in the exobase - the region where the atmosphere mixes with space - increased significantly.As a result, the emission of hydrogen into space increased by about 2.5 times compared to previous years in the same season.
Although this chapter is short and not as intense as the southern summer dust storms and major hydrogen loss events associated with Earth, it shows that Mars can lose water significantly even during traditional quiescent periods.
"These results add a new piece to the incomplete picture of how Mars loses its water over billions of years and show that short but intense episodes can play a role in the red planet's climate," concludes Brines (IAA-CSIC).
Adrián Brines et al., "Out-of-season water release during the northern Martian summer triggered by a strong localized dust storm" Commun Earth Environ, 2026.
