Scientists and most Americans have come to think of Mars as Earth’s other counterpart; NASA has even likened the solar system’s fourth planet as Earth’s sister. They both hold the potential for life, have polar ice caps made of water ice, and are about the same size. Now, scientists have confirmed another similarity between the two; they both have seasons.

If seasons can be likened to emotions, Mars may be the bipolar sister of Earth. Whereas Earth is able to moderate temperature through the oceans and a thick atmosphere, Mars’ temperatures swing wildly from extreme cold and hot from month to month, day to night and even from the ground to head height.

Mars does also experiences the same four seasons we do, however, Mars also has two more seasons— aphelion and perihelion—that it owes to its highly elliptical orbit around the sun. Earth’s orbit is mostly circular, which keeps it at an almost even distance from the sun. Because Mars is more elliptical, it gets a lot closer and farther away from the sun during its orbit, and during these times the planet experiences a global warming and cooling.

“Superimposed on the tilted-axis seasons is this other kind of season, where overall the planet is warmer when it’s near the sun and cooler when it’s far from the sun,” said Michael Smith, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center “It’s interesting to watch how those two play off of each other.”

Just like on Earth, these Martian seasons have distinct weather phenomena, which Rich Zurek, the lead Mars scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has been following. According to Zurek, a Martian winter is marked by heavy storms of thick cloud cover and dust that move over Mars’ continents toward the equator.

Mars orbits closest to the sun during its southern hemisphere summer. During this time, temperatures soar, and the extra energy from the sun—about 40 percent more than the rest of the year— can launch dust storms that cover large regions of Mars and even the entire planet for weeks or months. These global dust storms, Smith said, occur only during the perihelion season and once every three or so Martian years. He then added that it’s been about three and a half since the most recent global dust storm.