Are the current Martian dust storms worse than usual?

[CC]

I see that the Mars rovers are in virtual shutdown mode because of the intense dust storms on Mars. Given the fact that the rovers have been on the planet for three years now, does the appearance of such intense dust storms suggest a change in the climate of the planet? Do we have enough data from the past to know if this is unusual? An abberation? A tendency? Obviously, one season on Mars does not constitute a pattern. But it seems as if monitoring Martian climate would give us an idea of how much of our own climate change is due to solar systemic changes. What’s being done on this front? Any dopers have any ideas? xo, C.

[Grey]

@JPL

Mariner 9 was launched successfully on May 30, 1971, and became the first artificial satellite of Mars when it arrived and went into orbit, where it functioned in Martian orbit for nearly a year. Mariner 9 complete its final transmission October 27, 1972.

Upon arrival, Mariner 9 observed that a great dust storm was obscuring the whole globe of the planet. Ground controllers sent commands to the spacecraft to wait until the storm had abated, the dust had settled, and the surface was clearly visible before compiling its global mosaic of high-quality images of the Martian surface. The storm persisted for a month…

Link

So no, large dust storms are not unheard of. However until 1971 we didn’t even know Mars had weather.

[Grey]

I stand wonderfully corrected. I hadn’t realized we had records of dust storms reaching back before the 1970s.

The present work, the result of a wide-ranging survey of the literature since 1659 and much unpublished archival material, identifies dust storms as early as 1704 and as late as the 1990s, but the timecourse of such phenomena has been followed effectively only from the late nineteenth century.

from the British Astronomical Association