OMEGA/Mars Express Dust Storm Catalogue (ODSC)

The OMEGA/Mars Express Dust Storm Catalogue (ODSC) grouped 448 Martian dust storms detected with OMEGA/Mars Express from 2004 (end of Martian Year 26) to 2010 (mid MY 30). These detections can be categorised as local dust storms (364 ~ 81%) and regional dust storms (84 ~19%) based on the Cantor et al. (2001) criterion on the storm area. Some of the local dust storms, corresponding to strong dust activities that are spatially localised above craters, are flagged as "dust lifting". While OMEGA have a high spatial resolution, its field of view and spatial coverage are small, creating a bias in the full coverage of some dust storms that are larger than the field of view. To reduce this bias, we search for co-detections of storms between our catalogue (OMEGA/Mars Express) and the Mars Dust Activity Database (MDAD, Battalio & Wang, 2021; Battalio et al., 2023) and Mars Atlas of Dust Opacity Storm Catalogue (MADO-SC, Montabone et al., 2015, 2022; Lombard et al., 2025, Lombard & Montabone, 2024). Then, for cases of co-detections of the same storm, we update some corresponding OMEGA detection properties (Surface_area, Dust_lifting, Longitude_centroid, Longitude_min, Longitude_max, Latitude_centroid, Latitude_min, Latitude_max, Catalogue_source, ID_other_source). A manuscript currently under review at JGR: Planets presents the full methodology used to detect these dust storms, along with the results obtained from this new catalogue.

The catalogue is available as a CSV file, organised as follows: each line (448) corresponds to a dust storm detection, and each column (22) represents one property of the storm described below:

Obs_ID: the OMEGA observation ID

MY: the Martian year

Ls: the solar longitude (°)

LT: the local time (h)

Surface_area: the surface area of the storm (km^2)

Dust_lifting: description of the event based on its spatial extent ("Yes" or blank)

Longitude_centroid: the centroid longitude (0, 360°E)

Longitude_min: the minimum longitude (0, 360°E)

Longitude_max: the maximum longitude (0, 360°E)

Latitude_centroid: the centroid latitude (-90, 90°N)

Latitude_min: the minimum latitude (-90, 90°N)

Latitude_max: the maximum latitude (-90, 90°N)

taudust_median: the median dust optical depth at 0.9 µm (came from Leseigneur & Vincendon, 2023)

R277microns_median: the median reflectance factor at 2.27 µm

Inci_angle_median: the median incidence angle (or solar zenith angle) (°)

Inci_angle_min: the minimum incidence angle (or solar zenith angle) (°)

Inci_angle_max: the maximum incidence angle (or solar zenith angle) (°)

Emer_angle_median: the median emergence angle (or solar zenith angle) (°)

Emer_angle_min: the minimum emergence angle (or solar zenith angle) (°)

Emer_angle_max: the maximum emergence angle (or solar zenith angle) (°)

Catalogue_source: the catalogue from where the detection came from (ODSC, MDAD or MADO-SC)

ID_other_source: the MDAD or MADO-SC observation ID used to update the OMEGA detection.

How to cite the ODSC?Waiting for acceptance of our JGR: Planets paper, you may use the Zenodo DOI for citations.References:

Battalio, M., & Wang, H. (2021). The Mars Dust Activity Database (MDAD): A comprehensive statistical study of dust storm sequences. Icarus, 354, 114059. https://www.sciencedirect.com/ science/article/pii/S001910352030405X doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2020.114059

Battalio, J. M., Wang, H., Richardson, M. I., Toigo, A. D., & Saidel, M. (2023). Spatial extent of dust storm boundaries in the Mars Dust Activity Database. Icarus, 400, 115567. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103523001446 doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115567

Leseigneur, Y., & Vincendon, M. (2023). OMEGA/Mars Express: A new martian atmospheric dust hunter. Icarus, 392, 115366. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023Icar..39215366L (ADSBibcode: 2023Icar..39215366L) doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2022.115366

Lombard, T., & Montabone, L. (2024). Spatio-Temporal Detection, Aggregation and Tracking of Martian Large-Scale Dust Events. In (p. #3041). Pasadena, California, USA: LPI. https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/tenthmars2024/pdf/3041.pdf

Lombard, T., Montabone, L., Guyon, V., Millour, E., Forget, F., Battalio, M. J., Edwards, C. S., Kass, D. M., Kleinboehl, A., Guha, B. K., Smith, M. D., and Wolff, M. J. (2025). Monitoring Dust in the Martian Atmosphere: Recent Advances and Applications in Column Dust Optical Depth Processing. EPSC-DPS2025-1765, Helsinki, Finland. https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2025/EPSC-DPS2025-1765.html

Montabone, L., Forget, F., Millour, E., Wilson, R. J., Lewis, S. R., Cantor, B., Wolff, M. J. (2015, May). Eight-year climatology of dust optical depth on Mars. Icarus, 251, 65–95. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103515000044 doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2014.12.034

Montabone, L., Spiga, A., Kass, D. M., Kleinböhl, A., Forget, F., & Millour, E. (2020, August). Martian Year 34 Column Dust Climatology from Mars Climate Sounder Observations: Reconstructed Maps and Model Simulations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 125(8), e2019JE006111. doi: 10.1029/2019JE006111