Apart from Earth, even our nearest neighbor planet, Mars also undergoes climate change but the changing climate in the Red Planet is easier to understand than the condition of our resident planet.
Ice ages on Mars has different mechanics because instead of gathering ice on the poles, there are less ice on it and more ice on the middle area. Also, while Mars is titled at 25 degrees, it could lean more to about 60 degrees unlike Earth that stays at 22 to 25 degrees. Since it has a wider wobble, it results in warmer temperature at the poles and it causes the ice to evaporate and gather at the midsection of the planet.
"Mars, without oceans and without biology, is a more simple laboratory in a sense to understand the physics of climate," said Isaac Smith, the lead author on the study on Mars' climate published on Science AAAS and a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson.
Spiraling patterns were seen carved into the ice by the winds around the northern pole of the planet. This can reach about 500 miles and about half a mile in depths. But on the uneven terrain, there are uniformly deposited layers across the ice cap showing a shift from erosion to deposition, giving the polar cap more water ice.
"Right now Mars is ... the closest [to Earth] it's been in 13 years, and it's just this bright red jewel in the sky," Smith said, according to Los Angeles Times. "But if you were to live half a million years ago or half a million years in the future, it would look kind of a pinkish color instead of red."
Smith said that the discovery was a "lucky find" while they were studying the patterns carved at the north pole of Mars, adding that they noticed that the layers changed at the same time.
To examine the layers, the researchers used Shallow Subsurface Radar on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This helped them discover that about 87,000 cubic kilometers of ice accumulated at the poles. The previous ice age on the planet ended about 370,000 years ago covering the entire surface of Mars with 2 feet of ice, The Verge reported.
This research could help scientist to have a better understanding of climate change on Earth.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
