Typically, Martian ice ages see warmer temperatures at the poles, and movement of water vapor and dust towards the mid-latitudes, where they are deposited. Somewhat surprisingly, an ice age on Mars is not quite the same as on Earth. Today, Mars' obliquity is about 25 degrees. In the case of Mars, its angle of rotation (referred to as its obliquity) varied between 15 degrees and 35 degrees between 2.1 million and 400,000 years ago, playing havoc with its climate. These cycles involve a periodic wandering of a planet's rotational axis relative to the plane of its orbit, caused by the combined effects of the gravity of the sun, Jupiter and the other planets, as well as the shape and precession of the planet's orbit.īoth Earth and Mars experience these cycles, which correspond to climatic shifts. The ice age began and ended because of changes in the angle at which Mars spins, brought about by Milankovitch cycles. For the TARs to have formed at a different angle to the dunes implies that the wind direction in the lower mid-latitudes must have changed with the end of the ice age. These dates coincide with the start and end of Mars' last major ice age.
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