Comment on "Minimal size of a barchan dune"

TL;DR

This paper critiques a dune formation model, showing it is inconsistent with grain inertia limits and arguing that Martian dunes are formed by small grains, challenging previous assumptions about Martian wind strength.

Contribution

It demonstrates the non-self-consistency of the existing dune size model and provides evidence that Martian dunes are formed by small grains, not large ones as previously suggested.

Findings

The model's prediction of zero relaxation length is physically inconsistent.

Martian dune grains are small, around 87 micrometers, not large as previously claimed.

Martian dunes are unlikely formed under very strong winds with large grains.

Abstract

It is now an accepted fact that the size at which dunes form from a flat sand bed as well as their `minimal size' scales on the flux saturation length. This length is by definition the relaxation length of the slowest mode toward equilibrium transport. The model presented by Parteli, Duran and Herrmann [Phys. Rev. E 75, 011301 (2007)] predicts that the saturation length decreases to zero as the inverse of the wind shear stress far from the threshold. We first show that their model is not self-consistent: even under large wind, the relaxation rate is limited by grain inertia and thus can not decrease to zero. A key argument presented by these authors comes from the discussion of the typical dune wavelength on Mars (650 m) on the basis of which they refute the scaling of the dune size with the drag length evidenced by Claudin and Andreotti [Earth Pla. Sci. Lett. 252, 30 (2006)]. They instead propose that Martian dunes, composed of large grains (500 micrometers), were formed in the past under very strong winds. We show that this saltating grain size, estimated from thermal diffusion measurements, is not reliable. Moreover, the microscopic photographs taken by the rovers on Martian aeolian bedforms show a grain size of 87 plus or minus 25 micrometers together with hematite spherules at millimetre scale. As those so-called ``blueberries'' can not be entrained by reasonable winds, we conclude that the saltating grains on Mars are the small ones, which gives a second strong argument against the model of Parteli et al.