Obliquity-oblateness feedback: Are climatically sensitive values of obliquity dynamically unstable?

Details Obliquity-oblateness feedback: Are climatically sensitive values of obliquity dynamically unstable? Obliquity-oblateness feedback: Are climatically sensitive values of obliquity dynamically unstable?

Feb 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994georl..21..177b&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 21, Issue 3, p. 177-180

Physics

19

Geodesy And Gravity: Rotational Variations, Hydrology: Hydroclimatology, Oceanography: Physical: Sea Level Variations, Tectonophysics: Rheology-General

Scientific paper

A new model is presented for feedback between rotational and climatic variations, operative on time scales of 104-107 years. Due to the combined effect of planetary perturbations to the Earth's orbit plane and luni-solar torques on the oblate figure of the Earth, the obliquity varies by ~1° on a 4.104 year time scale. Associated changes in the seasonal and latitudinal pattern of incident solar radiation cause major glaciations. Mass transport from the oceans to the polar ice sheets during these glaciations can change the gravitational oblateness of the Earth by amounts approaching 1%. As the rate of spin axis precession is directly proportional to the oblateness, the climatically forced mass transport can be dramatically significant. A simple parameterization of this coupled orbital-rotational-climate system suggests that there is a strong tendency for the system to evolve away from climatically sensitive values of the obliquity. This may explain the mid-Pleistocene transition from an obliquity dominated regime to the present regime in which most climatic variability is concentrated at longer (105 year) periods.

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