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Why are summers in Marsā€™s southern hemisphere warmer and shorter than northern summers?

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Mars
Mars An especially serene view of Mars (Tharsis side), a composite of images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in April 1999. The northern polar cap and encircling dark dune field of Vastitas Borealis are visible at the top of the globe. White water-ice clouds surround the most prominent volcanic peaks, including Olympus Mons near the western limb, Alba Patera to its northeast, and the line of Tharsis volcanoes to the southeast. East of the Tharsis rise can be seen the enormous near-equatorial gash that marks the canyon system Valles Marineris.

The reason summers in the southern hemisphere of Mars are warmer and shorter than those in the north is due to the planet's elliptical orbit around the Sun.1

Because Mars follows an elongated orbital path, its distance from the Sun varies significantly throughout the Martian year. The planet reaches its closest point to the Sun during the southern hemisphere's summer, which results in higher temperatures. According to Kepler's second law of planetary motion, a planet moves faster when it is closer to the Sun, causing the southern summer to pass more quicklyā€”lasting 154 Martian days compared to the 178 days of the northern summer.12

This orbital configuration is not permanent; due to long-term changes in the planet's orbit, this situation will eventually reverse, and in approximately 25,000 years, the northern summers will become the shorter and warmer ones.1