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The dark stripes, which are on the order of a few metres wide and several hundred metres long, were identified on several steep equator-facing slopes in the middle latitudes of the red planet's southern hemisphere. The features are different to the much wider gullies already seen on many cold, pole-facing slopes, and appear to fade during the winter months, reappearing in springtime. In some locations more than 1,000 individual flows have been identified, some of which had grown by more than 200 metres in just two Earth months.
When researchers checked flow-marked slopes with the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), no sign of water appeared. The features may quickly dry on the surface or could be shallow subsurface flows. "The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are dark for some other reason." A flow initiated by briny water could rearrange grains or change surface roughness in a way that darkens the appearance. How the features brighten again when temperatures drop is harder to explain. "It's a mystery now, but I think it's a solvable mystery with further observations and laboratory experiments," McEwen said.
Originally posted by hrmmm
Obviously Global Warming due to human activity.
oh wait a miniute all the planets in the solar system are experiencing warming,due to solar output perhaps?