Climate Change

No, Solar Variations Can’t Account for the Current Global Warming Trend. Here’s Why:

In part I of this series on the sun and Earth’s climate, I covered the characteristics of the sun’s 11 and 22 year cycles, the observed laws which describe the behavior of the sunspot cycle, how proxy data is used to reconstruct a record of solar cycles of the past, Grand Solar Maxima and Minima, the relationship between Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and the sunspot cycle, and the relevance of these factors to earth’s climate system. In part II, I went over the structure of the sun, and some of the characteristics of each layer, which laid the groundwork for part III, in which I explained the solar dynamo: the physical mechanism underlying solar cycles, which I expanded upon in part IV, in which I talked about some common approaches to solar dynamo modeling, including Mean Field Theory. This installment covers how all of that relates to climate change and the current warming trend. (more…)

Share
By Credible Hulk, ago

Milankovitch Cycles and Climate: Part III – Putting it All Together

In parts I and II, we looked at axial obliquity, axial precession, apsidal precession, orbital eccentricity and orbital inclination, and how their cycles can affect the climate. In this installment of the series, we’ll look briefly at how these cycles look when combined, and then discuss one of the most prominent unsolved problems raised by the theory: The 100,000 Year problem.

Putting it all together

Putting it all together

Notice that the peaks and valleys in temperature are roughly periodic, and that with the possible exception of apsidal precession, there are slight fluctuations in the periods and amplitudes of these orbital cycles. One reason for this has to do with fluctuations in solar output, but another likely reason has to do with the very causes of these orbital cycles themselves: namely, these cycles are driven by mutual gravitational perturbations between the Earth, Sun, Moon, and to a lesser extent, Jupiter and the other planets in the solar system (Borisenkov 1985, Spiegel 2010) . (more…)

Share
By Credible Hulk, ago

Milankovitch Cycles and Climate: Part I – Axial Tilt and Precession

The theory of Milankovitch cycles is named after Serbian astronomer and geophysicist, Milutin Milanković, who in the 1920s postulated three cyclical movement patterns related to Earth’s orbit and rotation and their resultant effects on the Earth’s climate. These cycles include axial tilt (obliquity), elliptical eccentricity, and axial precession. In aggregate, these cycles contribute to profound long term changes in earth’s climate via orbital forcing.

Axial Obliquity:

The Earth’s rotational axis is always tilted slightly; currently, its axis is about 23.4 degrees from the vertical. Alternatively, you could say that its equatorial plane is tilted about 23.4 degrees relative to its orbital plane. This tilt is responsible for Earth’s seasons. During the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer, Earth is further away from the Sun than it is during the NH winter due to its slightly elliptical orbit, yet it receives more sunlight because it’s tilted towards the Sun. During this same time period, the Southern Hemisphere (SH) is tilted away from the Sun, which is why NH summer coincides with SH Winter and vice versa. Contrastingly, during the NH winter, the Earth is closer to the Sun, yet receives less sunlight because it’s tilted away from it. During that same period, the SH is tilted towards the Sun, and is thus experiencing summer. (more…)

Share
By Credible Hulk, ago

How Continental Positioning affects Climate: Part I – Plate Tectonics, Albedo, and the SnowBall Earth Hypothesis

About 700 – 800 MYA, during the Neoproterozoic era (in the late Precambrian), it has been proposed that the Supercontinent, Rodinia occupied an equatorial position on the Earth. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this tropical arrangement of the continents may have set the stage for a massive glaciation known as “Snowball Earth” during the Cryogenian period, despite equatorial regions receiving the most sunlight due to the orientation of the Earth with respect to the sun. Indeed, the fact that equatorial regions receive the most sunlight is part of the reason why tropical rainforest biomes exist where they do. So how could this have happened? Why would an equatorial continental arrangement render such a glaciation more likely? More on the Snowball Earth hypothesis in a moment: More generally however, what factors are capable of inducing changes in the climate?

There are several of them. First of all though, what do we mean by climate, and how does it differ from weather?  (more…)

Share
By Credible Hulk, ago