Investigating the Impact of the Spatially Heterogeneous Surface Dust Cover on Martian Global Dust Event Occurrence

The observed inter‐annual variability of Global Dust Events (GDE) occurrence on Mars remains challenging to understand and therefore to predict. Several hypotheses have been investigated so far, but a central aspect seems to be missing: How the heterogeneity of the surface dust cover and regolith particle size distributions relate to regional discrepancies in dust emission. We set up a framework based on saltation theory and surface wind stress scenarios to perform simulations of the vertical dust emission flux at a low computational cost. By implementing a relationship between the Dust Cover Index and dust particle mobilization thresholds and emission efficiencies, our work shows that the geographic heterogeneity of surface dust particle sizes may constitute a key feature to better understand the explosive growth of GDEs and their inter‐annual variability.