Essentially, researchers found numerous sloping terrain sites with ferrous and ferric spectrographic signatures that have been rising and falling with temperatu

Essentially, researchers found numerous sloping terrain sites with ferrous and ferric spectrographic signatures that have been rising and falling with temperature. The best explanation seems to be melting briny water. The effect varies a lot from one year to another, and lots of comparable candidate spots don't show any effect. But you can't learn anything about what's going on from this dumbed-down reference. Here are some better ones -- the two peer-reviewed research papers, and the JPL press release: http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2013-acceptedGRL.pdf http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2013-acceptedGRL.pdf http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2014-acceptedIcarus.pdf http://wray.eas.gatech.edu/Ojha_etal2014-acceptedIcarus.pdf http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-042 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-042