  Atmospheric dust plays an important role on the terrestrial climate,
regulating the amount of solar radiation coming to the surface, affecting the
development and the life time of the clouds and providing fundamental nutrients
to the growth of the terrestrial and oceanic biomes. On Mars, the global effect
of dust is even stronger due to the widespread presence of sources and the lack
of vegetation and oceans able to mitigate its contribution. The DREAMS station
and the Dust Complex, on board of the ExoMars 2016 and 2020 mission
respectively, have been specifically developed for the study of the Martian
airborne dust. During my Phd I joined the team that lead the DREAMS experiment
and the MicroMed sensor of the Dust Complex. As a part of the instruments
developing and the acquisition of martian analogous data, our team has carried
out various campaigns in the Sahara desert, to study the environment and the
lifting phenomena that are expected on Mars. We monitored the dust lifting
events by acquiring, for the first time in literature, synchronous measurement
of meteorological data, atmospheric electric field, saltation activity and
suspended dust concentration. Currently, this is the most complete data set
available for the study of the dust lifting processes. We worked on the
development of proper detection algorithms to individuate the dust events
acquired in the surveys, applicable also to the future martian missions. We
studied the characteristic of the observed dust storm and dust devils activity,
focusing on their electric proprieties. In particular, we obtained the first
experimental indications of how the induced electric field is related to the
amount of suspended grains and meteorological characteristics of the events. We
compared the terrestrial results with the currently available martian data, in
order to prepare the analysis of the next ExoMars measurements.

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics