Climate Letter #1007

Getting to know and understand the Milankovitch cycles can be easy!

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It is also important, if you happen to have an interest in climate history.  For me, the study of climate history is a critical key to understanding what the future will be like, bringing to light some relevant details that are beyond the reach of what humans are capable of dealing with.  More on that later on.  Let’s focus now on the fundamental side, specifically the Milankovitch data.  I expect that you already have at least a general idea of what it is basically all about, or can go somewhere and look that up.
What I have to show you, first of all, is a website you may not be familiar with, that shows all sorts of neat things about the cycles in an active and interactive way, actually fun to play with.  Here it is:
Once you have worked out all the different combinations you will see what a powerful effect the cycles have had on Earth’s climate history, especially during the glaciation period.  Note that the “hot” side is always taken to be North, leaving the southern polar region in a correspondingly cold period, but then in reality the two switch sides and eventually South becomes the hot one.  Every full cycle of this “polar seesaw” takes about 23,000 years to complete, tuned mostly to the relatively short Precession cycle.  The amplitude, or heat effect, of that cycle at its peaks regularly changes, depending on how well it matches up with the positions of the two longer cycles.
That brings us to another website showing a graph you will want to become familiar with and perhaps save for future reference.  http://serc.carleton.edu/images/microbelife/topics/proxies/milankovich_cycles.png
Do you see how the Eccentricity cycle goes through extra-long phases that apparently has a way of modulating the strength of the Precession cycle?  The size of that effect is surprisingly large.  It implies that the combined effect on rare occasions of mutual peaking should be extremely powerful, regardless of Obliquity, if you are willing to wait that long, or if you just want to interpret some of a few unique historical events.  The history of all of these cycles can be determined by technicians, and hopefully charted, with a fair amount of accuracy going back many millions of years.
The insolation effect of these cycles, regulating the intensity of received radiation, gets stronger and stronger as one moves toward higher latitudes, either north or south.  In the South they can affect the melting rate of the Antarctic ice sheet.  In the North they have a similar effect on Greenland and can also be a deciding factor in the regulation of a much wider pattern of spreading permafrost and ice sheets over vast land areas, once the planet has become cool enough for these things to form.
One final observation, as you may have already noticed, all three curves have recently peaked with respect to heating the North, and are still quite far distant from doing much to Antarctica.  Any actual trend toward heating at either pole needs to be attributed to something else.
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Here is one of today’s big stories that should not be missed:
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Another story warns that the current rapid pace of change in the carbon cycle is conducive to the promotion of mass extinction.  The basic idea has merit but the method of presentation is perhaps a bit obscure for most of us.
Carl

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