Brian Jackson edited section_Background_Dust_devils_are__.tex  over 8 years ago

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Studies of Martian dust devils have been conducted through direct imaging of the devils and identification of their tracks on Mars' dusty surface \citep[cf.][]{Balme_2006}. Studies with in-situ meteorological instrumentation have also identified dust devils, either via obscuration of the Sun by the dust column \citep{Zorzano_2013} or their pressure signals \citep{Ellehoj_2010}. Studies have also been conducted of terrestrial dust devils and frequently involve in-person monitoring of field sites. Terrestrial dust devils are visually surveyed \citep{Pathare_2010}, directly sampled \citep{Balme_2003}, or recorded using in-situ meteorological equipment \citep{Sinclair_1973,Lorenz_2012}.  As noted in \citet{Lorenz_2009}, in-person visual surveys are likely to be biased toward detection of larger, more easily seen devils. Such surveys would also fail to recover dustless vortices \citep{Lorenz_2015}. Recently, terrestrial surveys similar to Martian dust devil surveys have been conducted using in-situ single barometers \citep{Lorenz_2012,Lorenz_2014,Jackson_2015} and photovoltaic sensors \citep{Lorenz_2015}. These sensor-based terrestrial surveys have the advantage of being directly analogous to Martian surveys and are highly cost-effective compared to the in-person surveys. surveys (in a dollars per data point sense).  In single-barometer surveys, a sensor is deployed in-situ and records a pressure time series at a sampling period $\lesssim 1$ s. Since it is a low-pressure convective vortex, the nearby passage of a dust devil vortex  will register as pressure dip discernible against a background ambient (but not necessarily constant) pressure. Figure \ref{fig:conditioning_detection_b_inset} from \citet{Jackson_2015} shows a time-series with a typical dust devil signal.