English

Near-resonance tidal evolution of the Earth-Moon system influenced by orbital-scale climate change

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2019-09-25 v2 Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics

Abstract

We build a conceptual coupled model of the climate and tidal evolution of the Earth-Moon system to find the influence of the former on the latter. An energy balance model is applied to calculate steady-state temperature field from the mean annual insolation as a function of varying astronomical parameters. A harmonic oscillator model is applied to integrate the lunar orbit and Earth's rotation with the tidal torque dependent on the dominant natural frequency of ocean. An ocean geometry acts as a bridge between temperature and oceanic frequency. On assumptions of a fixed hemispherical continent and an equatorial circular lunar orbit, considering only the 41 kyr periodicity of Earth's obliquity ε\varepsilon and the M2M_2 tide, simulations are performed near tidal resonance for 10610^6 yr. It is verified that the climate can influence the tidal evolution via ocean. Compared with the tidal evolution with constant ε\varepsilon, that with varying ε\varepsilon is slowed down; the Earth-Moon distance oscillates in phase with ε\varepsilon before the resonance maximum but exactly out of phase after that; the displacement of the oscillation is in positive correlation with the difference between oceanic frequency and tidal frequency.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.09121,
  title  = {Near-resonance tidal evolution of the Earth-Moon system influenced by orbital-scale climate change},
  author = {Nan Wang and Zhi-Guo He},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.09121},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

14 pages, 5 figures, accepted (2019 July 18) for publication in RAA