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…)
