Mars has macroweather too

But weather forecasting on the Red Planet is likely to be even trickier than on Earth. Mars has the same three-part pattern of atmospheric conditions as Earth, finds a new study by researchers at UCL and McGill University. This includes weather, which changes day-to-day due to constant fluctuations in the atmosphere; climate, which varies over decades and a third regime called macroweather, which describes the relatively stable regime between weather and climate. The results published in Geophysical Research Letters today also show that the sun plays a major role in determining macroweather. The research promises to advance scientists' understanding of the dynamics of Earth's own atmosphere - and could provide insights into the weather of Venus, Saturn's moon Titan, and possibly the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. By taking into account how the sun heats Mars, as well as the thickness of the planet's atmosphere, the scientists predicted that Martian temperature and wind would fluctuate similarly to Earth's - but that the transition from weather to macroweather would take place over 1. Martian days (about two Earth days), compared with a week to 10 days on Earth.