The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs History and Applications of Dust Devil Studies

Studies of dust devils, and their impact on society, are reviewed. Dust devils have been noted since antiquity, and have been documented in many countries, as well as on the planet Mars. As time-variable vortex entities, they have become a cultural motif. Three major stimuli of dust devil research are identified, nuclear testing, terrestrial climate studies, and perhaps most significantly, Mars research. Dust devils present an occasional safety hazard to light structures and have caused several deaths. B R.D. Lorenz [email protected] 1 Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723, USA 2 Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK 3 Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China 4 Finnish Meteorological Institute, 00101 Helsinki, Finland 5 Institute for Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Pohligstr. 3, 50969 Cologne, Germany 6 Present address: USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA 7 A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pyzhevsky 3, 119017 Moscow, Russia 8 Space Science and Technology Department, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, UK 9 Institut für Planetologie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Wilhelm-Klemm-Str. 10, 48149 Münster, Germany 10 Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany 11 Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD), 4 place Jussieu, 75252, Paris cedex 5, France 12 Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan 13 Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430063, China