A combination of dust devils and strong wind gusts seem to be responsible for the constant haze on the Red Planet - by AndyTomaswick
But it is not enough to detect those changes alone, as they could be caused by sources other than dust devils. So the RDS combines forces with another MEDA instrument, the Thermal InfraRed Sensor , which can provide data on the tracking radiative flux around the rover. Combining these two data sets allow scientists to comprehensively say whether or not a dust devil has overtaken the rover.
They do so often. About four times a day, the rover is subjected to “convective vortices,” the technical term for updrafts that are strong enough to sense. About one of those four carries enough dust to be thought of as what we would conventionally call a “dust devil.” And their existence seems to be the source of most of the dust that reaches the air. But they aren’t the only source.
There was some evidence for strong wind gusts that don’t actually form into a dust devil and might force a significant amount of dust into the air themselves. While these weren’t necessarily as strong as the dust devils, they covered a much larger area, with the largest being ten times larger than the largest dust devil. So even if they are much weaker, they were potentially able to lift smaller grains of dust high into the atmosphere.
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