TWISTER: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of a whirling dust devil travelling across the red planet this year.

Ice-cold temperatures and hurricane-like air pressure are hitting planet Mars, but rover Curiosity is basking in the sun.

Nasa's Curiosity, which is the fifth weather station on the planet, is sending weather reports - air temperature, ground temperature, air pressure, wind and other variables - every day from the landing site in Gale Crater.

The latest report shows it's sunny, with an average low of -75 degrees Celsius and a high of 4C.

Scientists have known that temperatures can vary widely in a Martian day as it has a thin atmosphere and is sensitive to the coming and going of sun rays.

But they are watching the weather information closely as it also shows atmospheric pressure swings wildly throughout the day, PhysOrg reported.

"The exciting new result from Curiosity is a regular and truly enormous swing in atmospheric pressure through each day," International Pacific Research Centre director Kevin Hamilton told Phys.org.

"Measurements on Earth show a daily swing in pressure of only about one-10th of one per cent of the mean pressure, whereas Curiosity is measuring swings of almost 10 per cent of the daily average pressure.

"We observe such a relative pressure change on Earth only with the passage of an extremely strong hurricane."

Hamilton believed that at certain points on Mars - at two “action centres” along the equator on opposite sides of the planet - pressures would fluctuate.

Curiosity happened to land in the middle of one of the equatorial action centres, apparently confirming this theory.

Hamilton said the daily cycles could help explain the long-standing mystery of how winds become sufficiently strong to lift enough dust from the surface and create the remarkable global dust storms seen every few years on Mars.

"Now that my theory of a daily resonant oscillation seems confirmed, it might help explain the trigger for these dust storms," he said.

Curiosity was sent to Mars on August 5 for a two-year mission. Researchers are using the rover to assess whether the environment could have been hospitable to microbial life.

The rover's final destination is Mount Sharp, a mountain rising from the crater floor, but it was expected to complete that journey by the end of the year.