Surface pressure measurements on Mars have revealed a wide variety of atmospheric phenomena. The Mars Science Laboratory Rover Environmental Monitoring Station pressure sensor data set is now the longest duration record of surface pressure on Mars. We use the first 2580 Martian sols, nearly 4 Mars years, of measurements to identify atmospheric pressure waves with periods of tens of minutes to hours using wavelet analysis on residual pressure after the tidal harmonics are removed. We find these waves have a clear diurnal cycle with strongest activity in the early morning and late evening and a seasonal cycle with the strongest waves in the second half of the martian year (Ls = 180–360°). The strongest such waves of the entire mission occurred during the Mars Year 34 global dust storm. Comparable atmospheric waves are identified using atmospheric modeling with the MarsWRF general circulation model in a “nested” high spatial resolution mode. With the support of the modeling, we find these waves best fit the expected properties of inertia‐gravity waves with horizontal wavelengths of O(100s) of km.

In situ measurements of how air temperature near the surface responds to changing topography on other planets are rare. The Bagnold dunes were investigated by Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover during its second winter in Gale crater on Mars. The effect of Bagnold dune slopes on the local microclimate air temperature, potential temperature, near‐surface lapse rate, and how they change the variability of short‐lived air temperature fluctuations is described. The oscillations with periods under 24 min are characterized using Fourier analysis. Comparing the sols during the Bagnold dunes exploration to a typical southern winter sol, we characterize the changes in temperature oscillations near the east facing High dune, the west facing Namib dune, as well as in the area between the dunes. Each of the regions had distinct signatures, with the west and east orientation of the dunes affecting the data.

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