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That's the finding by assistant professor Simon Zwieback at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute in a study published Sept. 27 by the journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes.

As the global climate continues to warm, many questions remain about the periglacial environment.

During the last ice age it experienced what geologists call a periglacial climate—a zone at the edge of an ice sheet characterized by frequent freeze-thaw cycles that fractured the rock.

Widen the aperture a bit, and we can envision Earth entering a fire age comparable to the ice ages of the Pleistocene, complete with the pyric equivalent of ice sheets, pluvial lakes, periglacial outwash plains, mass extinctions, and sea level changes.

"Silica signatures have been identified from orbit on Mars in Amazonian periglacial terrains, and the Curiosity rover has identified silica-rich poorly crystalline materials in Hesperian lake sediments in Gale crater," the study reads.