There is a long history of Mars dust storm observations using terrestrial telescopes.
Data on earlier storms have been reviewed by Slipher [1962] and Capen [1971]. The massive dust storm on Mars has created some eerie views without shadows for NASA's Curiosity rover, like this image taken on June 17, 2018.
Mars is a bit of a mess right now. But NASA's Curiosity rover, seen in a self-portrait taken last week in the Gale Crater, runs on nuclear energy and is powering through. Solar heating warms the martian atmosphere and causes the air to move, lifting dust off the ground. Dust storms on Mars occur regularly during the southern summer season when the planet is closer to the Sun along its elliptical orbit. A dust storm has reduced sunlight and visibility on Mars.
In most Martian years, nearly twice as long as Earth years, the storms dissipate. All dust storms on Mars, no matter what size, are powered by sunshine. The enhanced solar illumination causes stronger temperature contrasts, with the resulting air movements more readily lifting dust particles from the surface – some of which measure up to about 0.01 mm in size. In a special NASA teleconference on June 13, researchers said that, while Mars' atmosphere is thin, there is still dust being raised.
The Red Planet is in the middle of a global dust storm that has forced one Mars rover into hibernation and left another working through hazy conditions. Global or great dust storms are most common when Mars is near perihelion. Decades of Mars observations show a pattern of regional dust storms arising in northern spring and summer. Mars dust storms are much different than the dust devils that many people have seen in images sent back from the planet. But we’ve seen global dust storms in 1971, 1977, 1982, 1994, 2001 and …
During summer in the Red Planet’s southern hemisphere, when Mars is at its closest point to the Sun, solar heating can drive immense storms that blow up red dust and can obscure the surface for months. "Every year there are some moderately big dust storms that pop up on Mars and they cover continent-sized areas and last for weeks at a time," said Michael Smith, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mars is infamous for its large and sometimes quite lengthy dust storms which raise so much dust that they can be seen with telescopes from Earth. Comparison images of Mars taken by Hubble (left) and showing a global dust storm that engulfed it (right). The enhanced solar illumination causes stronger temperature contrasts, with the resulting air movements more readily lifting dust particles from the surface – some of which measure up to about 0.01 mm in size. Dust Storm On Mars Now this is really bad weather – a dust storm that doesn’t just cover an area, or even a hemisphere, but the entire planet. [1979]. Solar heating warms the martian atmosphere and causes the air to move, lifting dust off the ground. Mars is infamous for intense dust storms, which sometimes kick up enough dust to be seen by telescopes on Earth. Still, Martian storms still could pose risks to humans. Dust storms on Mars occur regularly during the southern summer season when the planet is closer to the Sun along its elliptical orbit. While the wind speeds reached during these storms are not quite dangerous, taking into consideration that Mars's atmosphere is 1% of Earth's, the sheer amount of dust raised can knock field machinery out of order until fixed.