Effect of charging of aerosols in the lower atmosphere of Mars during the dust storm of 2001

Aerosols are very important in the Martian climate system. Aerosols get charged by the attachment of ions in the atmosphere. Charging of aerosols reduces the conductivity of the atmosphere as the very mobile ions are lost during the ion-aerosol attachment. During a dust storm the dust opacity increases and more ion-aerosol attachment process occurs and consequently conductivity reduces further. It was found that with the background aerosols (dust opacity ∼0.2), the conductivity close to the surface of Mars was reduced by a factor of 5, but during the dust storm (opacity ∼5) of 2001 the conductivity decreased by about 2 orders of magnitude.