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Originally posted by Orion437
Maybe this is just cracked ice.
According to the new model, CO2 from the atmosphere freezes onto the surface every Martian winter, eventually creating a solid layer about 1 m deep. This CO2 ice is transparent, like glass. When spring comes and the Sun rises again above the horizon, the sunlight passes right through the ice, heating the soil underneath.
The warm soil makes the CO2 ice above it sublimate, or transform directly from a solid to a gas. The gas is at first trapped beneath the ice, but when the pressure builds up enough, it squirts out with hurricane-like speed in metre-wide jets.