A year of convective vortex activity at Gale crater

Atmospheric convective vortices, which become dust devils when they entrain dust from the surface, are prominent features within Mars' atmosphere which are thought to be a primary contributor to the planet's background dust opacity. Buoyantly produced in convectively unstable layers at a planet's surface, these vertically aligned vortices possess rapidly rotating and ascending near-surface warm air and are readily identified by temporal signatures of reduced atmospheric surface pressure measured within the vortex as it passes by. We investigate such signatures in surface pressure measurements acquired by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station aboard the Mars Science Laboratory rover located within Gale crater. During the first 707 sols of the mission, 245 convective vortices are identified with pressure drops in the range of 0.30-2.86 Pa with a median value of 0.67 Pa. The cumulative distribution of their pressure drops follows a power law of slope -2.77 and we observe seasonal and diurnal trends in their activity. The vast majority of these pressure signatures lack corresponding reductions in REMS-measured UV flux, suggesting that these vortices rarely cast shadows upon the rover and therefore are most often dust-free. The relatively weak-magnitude, dustless vortices at Gale crater are consistent with predictions from mesoscale modeling indicating that the planetary boundary layer is suppressed within the crater and are also consistent with the almost complete absence of both dust devils within Mars Science Laboratory camera images and Gale crater surface dust devil streaks within orbiter images.