Thomas Pierron defended his PhD thesis entitled “Modeling the Martian Dust Cycle” on Thursday, February 26th, 2026, at 2:00 pm, in the Astier amphitheater (Esclangon building) on the Pierre and Marie Curie campus of Sorbonne University.

The jury was composed of:

– Thomas Gautier (Chair, examiner)
– Béatrice Marticorena (reviewer)
– Michael Battalio (reviewer)
– Melinda Kahre (examiner)
– Luca Montabone (examiner)

Airborne dust plays a central role in the Martian climate, controlling much of its seasonal and interannual atmospheric variability and driving regional and global dust storms. Despite decades of observations, reproducing the Martian dust cycle remains a major challenge for climate models.
This thesis introduces a new numerical model of the Martian dust cycle, based on precomputed general circulation model (GCM) simulations and explicitly accounting for unresolved subgrid-scale lifting processes through parameterizations. This fast and computationally efficient model enables long-term simulations and reproduces for the first time in a physically consistent framework:
– the seasonal dust cycle during years without global dust storms,
– the interannual variability with both years with and without global dust storms
– and the observed seasonality of global dust storms.

These results demonstrate the critical role of unresolved local circulations and heterogeneous surface dust reservoirs in controlling the Martian dust cycle. This work provides new physical insights into the mechanisms governing global dust storms and opens perspectives for improving Martian climate models.

Congratulations to Thomas Pierron who presented an innovative and tremendous work helping our understanding of dust cycle on Mars!