Editor's Summary
13 September 2007
Taking a tilt at Mars
Mars experiences much greater fluctuations in exposure to sunlight than the Earth does, because of larger variations in astronomical factors such as the tilt of its axis relative to the orbital plane. Climate change is accordingly more intense on Mars than on Earth. Norbert Schorghofer has now developed a climate model that accounts for the advance and retreat of the subsurface martian ice sheets over forty major ice ages and five million years. This explains the present distribution of subsurface ice on Mars. In addition, lessons learned from the long and relatively simple martian ice-age stratigraphy should help when it comes to interpreting the more complicated events here on Earth.
Letter: Dynamics of ice ages on Mars
Norbert Schorghofer
doi:10.1038/nature06082
