Word: martianize
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High above, beyond that turbulent atmosphere, Mariner 9 had better luck. Once the storm subsided, it focused on a remarkable range of Martian features...
YOUR BASIC Red-Blooded Post-War American Kid grew up reading science fiction. He sheltered C.S. Lewis's Perelandra beneath the edge of a junior high school desk; he tripped across decades of The Martian Chrnoicles on hot, tedious summer afternoons; he liked Kurt Vonnegut for years before Slaughterhouse Five became a best-seller. Then the world changed, and he probably has not read much science fiction since...
Gyroscope. The possibility of monsoons is not as farfetched as it seems. Mars has an eccentric orbit that causes large variations in the planet's distance from the sun. The Martian north pole is currently tilted toward the sun only when the planet is also at its greatest distance, or aphelion, from the sun. In contrast, the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun at the planet's closest approach, or perihelion. As a result, the southern polar cap gets warm enough to evaporate almost completely each summer, releasing most of its dry ice into the atmosphere...
...like a spinning gyroscope, Mars slowly wobbles as it travels around the sun. Though this motion, or precession, is barely perceptible, the Martian axis leans in the opposite direction every 25,000 years, or halfway through a complete precessional cycle. When that happens, the northern polar area is angled toward the sun at the planet's closest approach, while the southern polar area, tilted away, freezes and traps the moisture. What interests Smith, however, is the orientation of the poles in between those extremes. Then, both polar regions receive equal heating from the sun. The warmer outer portions...
...either polar cap, says Smith, enough water might be released to keep the monsoons going for centuries, and possibly millenniums, until the slow precession of the planet's axis causes one pole to begin cooling enough to draw water back out of the atmosphere and into the Martian deep freeze for another 25,000 years. Even if the monsoon theory is correct, however, many centuries will pass before visitors to Mars will have to shoot Martian rapids or brave unearthly downpours. Mars has just passed the point in its precession at which the north polar summers occur...