Milankovitch Cycles

Linda Forbes – Unit A1

 Climate Change
• Building for the future

• What sort of future could we be planning for?

• How climate has varied in the past

• Humankind’s effect on Earth’s patterns

 Climate Change
• In the beginning there were Ice Ages

• Every 100,000 years (or so) the glaciers melted

• Rising sea levels and warming of the climate for

10, 000 years

• So how did this happen?

 Milankovitch Cycles
• Milankovitch (1879-1958) explained advance
and retreat of polar ice caps were caused by
changes in the Earth’s orbital cycles

• These cycles influence amount of solar radiation

striking different parts of the Earth at different
times of year
 History
• But it wasn’t just his idea

• Adhemar (1842) and Croll (1875)

suspected it

• Deep ice and ocean cores support theory

 Earthly wobbles
• It’s done by precession, eccentricity, and axial
tilt of the Earth's orbit

• Each has a different time period

(think of biorhythms!)

• Combined together have noticeable effect

 History

• Work by Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton

• Paper "Variations in the earth’s orbit:

pacemaker of the ice ages" in 1976
 Precession
• Earth's axis
completes one full
cycle of precession
every 26,000 years

• Results from non-

spherical shape and
equatorial bulge
• http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyper
glac/time1/milankov.htm
 Eccentricity
• The elliptical orbit
rotates, more slowly,
leading to a 100,000
year cycle

• http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyper
glac/time1/milankov.htm
 Axial tilt
• Angle between Earth's rotational axis and the
normal to plane of its orbit changes from 21.5
degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a
41,000 year cycle

http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm
 Insolation
(INcident SOLar radiATION)
• Influence of cycles
calculated by Berger
(1991) and Laskar
(1993)

• Berger's solution for

65° N from present
day to one million
years ago.
http://deschutes.gso.uri.edu/~rutherfo/milankovitch.html
 So where are we now?
• Northern Hemisphere

• Peak summer insolation 9,000 years ago

• Ice sheets melted

• Less solar radiation since then in summers

 And what happens next?
• Next Ice Age was rumoured in 1960s

• Turned out to be a false alarm

• Carbon dioxide emissions changed

pattern permanently?
 Climate Change
• Building for the future

• What sort of future could we be planning for?

• Ice Age or Dot Age?