FOR most of the Earth's history, the planet has been either very cold, by our standards, or very hot. Fifty million years ago there was no ice on the poles and crocodiles lived in Wyoming. Eighteen thousand years ago there was ice two miles thick in Scotland and, because of the size of the ice sheets, the sea level was 130m lower. Ice-core studies show that in some places dramatic changes happened remarkably swiftly: temperatures rose by as much as 20°C in a decade. Then, 10,000 years ago, the wild fluctuations stopped, and the climate settled down to the balmy, stable state that the world has enjoyed since then. At about that time, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, mankind started to progress.
I rather doubt that, unless of course you figure the earth is no longer in the same orbit it entered and has sustained for the last three million years.
Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle Figure 1-1 Global warming Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years
Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice
In Figure 1-6, the 10 kyr years of agriculture and civilization appear as a sudden rise in temperature barely visible squeezed against the left hand axis of the plot. The temperature of 1950 is indicated by the horizontal line. As is evident from the data, civilization was created in an unusual time. There are several important features to notice in these data, all of which will be discussed further in the remainder of the book. For the last million years or so (the left most third of the plot) the oscillations have had a cycle of about 100 kyr (thousand years). That is, the enduring period of ice is broken, roughly every 100 kyr, by a brief interglacial. During this time, the terminations of the ice ages appear to be particularly abrupt, as you can see from the sudden jumps that took place near 0, 120, 320, 450, and 650 thousand years ago. This has led scientists to characterize the data as shaped like a "sawtooth," although the pattern is not perfectly regular. Figure 1-6 Climate of the last 3 million years But as we look back beyond a 1000 kyr (1 million years), the character changes completely. The cycle is much shorter (it averages 41 kyr), the amplitude is reduced, the average value is higher (indicating that the ice ages were not as intense) and there is no evidence for the sawtooth shape. These are the features that ice age theories endeavor to explain. Why did the transition take place? What are the meanings of the frequencies? (We will show that they are well-known astronomical frequencies.) In the period immediately preceding the data shown here, older than 3 million years, the temperature didnt drop below the 1950 value, and we believe that large glaciers didnt form perhaps only small ones, such as we have today in Greenland and Antarctica. |
Spectrum of 100-kyr glacial cycle: Orbital inclination, not eccentricity Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle
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http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.252.html#1
INTERPLANETARY DUST PARTICLES (IDPs) are deposited on the Earth at the rate of about 10,000 tons per year. Does this have any effect on climate? Scientists at Caltech have found that ancient samples of helium-3 (coming mostly from IDPs) in oceanic sediments exhibit a 100,000-year periodicity. The researchers assert that their data, taken along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, support a recently enunciated idea that Earth's orbital inclination varies with a 100-kyr period; this notion in turn had been broached as an explanation for a similar periodicity in the succession of ice ages. (K.A. Farley and D.B. Patterson, Nature, 7 December 1995.)
Farley & Patterson 1998, http://www.elsevier.com/gej-ng/10/20/36/33/37/32/abstract.html
Farley http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~farley/
Farley http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/18/23/54/21/49/abstract.html
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/dec96/noaa96-78.html
ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DURING LAST GLACIAL PERIOD COULD BE TIED TO DUST-INDUCED REGIONAL WARMING
Preliminary new evidence suggests that periodic increases in atmospheric dust concentrations during the glacial periods of the last 100,000 years may have resulted in significant regional warming, and that this warming may have triggered the abrupt climatic changes observed in paleoclimate records, according to a scientist at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current scientific thinking is that the dust concentrations contributed to global cooling.
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9228-mysterious-glowing-clouds-targeted-by-nasa.html
Mysterious glowing clouds targeted by NASA
26 May, 2006
High-altitude noctilucent clouds have been mysteriously spreading around the world in recent years (Image: NASA/JSC/ES and IA)
Bookmark Bump.
Good info; thanks.