An international research team led by Chinese scientists has revealed climate change on the Mars by observing the stratigraphic sequences where China's Mars rover landed, according to the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) on Friday.

The research confirmed that wind processes have recorded changes of the Martian environment with its rotation axis and the glacial period, and it will help understand the ancient climate history of Mars and provide a reference for the climate evolution on Earth, said the NAOC.

The Mars rover, Zhurong, landed on the Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere of the Red Planet on May 15, 2021.

Among the planets in the solar system, Mars is the most similar to Earth. The current status and evolution of the Red Planet are considered the "future of the Earth," according to the NAOC.

Aeolian processes, which involved the erosion, transport and deposition of sediments by wind, have shaped the landforms and deposits on the surface of Mars and recorded its evolution and climate change.

Using cameras mounted on the rover, scientists carried out a joint detection of high-resolution remote sensing and in situ observation with the rover, extracted information of the dunes and analyzed winds' direction and age.

The study was jointly conducted by the NAOC, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics and the Institute of Xizang Plateau Research, all under the CAS, China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission team and Brown University in the United States.

The team finally revealed that the rover's landing area may have experienced two main climatic stages. The bright sand dunes and dark sand accumulation further revealed that the predominant wind direction underwent a roughly 70 degree change.

Scientists believe that the climate change occurred about 400,000 years ago. It may be due to the change in the inclination of the rotation axis, making the planet experience a global climate change from the middle and low latitudes to the polar regions.

The findings were published in the journal Nature on July 5.