Related papers: Climate Stability and Policy: A Synthesis
The Milankovitch theory states that the orbital eccentricity, precession, and obliquity of the Earth influence our climate by modulating the summer insolation at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. Despite considerable success of…
Long-term changes in the tilt of the Earths axis, relative to the plane of its orbit, are of great significance to long-term climate change, because they control the size of the arctic and antarctic circles. These Milankovitch cycles have…
The present earth warming up is often explained by the atmosphere gas greenhouse effect. This explanation is in contradiction with the thermodynamics second law. The warming up by greenhouse effect is quite improbable. It is cloud…
The Anthropocene is a proposed time subdivision of the earth's history correlated to the strong human perturbation of the ecosystem. Much debate is ongoing about what date should be considered as the start of the Anthropocene, but much less…
Glaciations were attributed to variations of the Earths orbit (Milankovitch cycles). But the best ever dated paleoclimatic record (from a speleothem from Devils Hole, Nevada) demonstrated that the end of the last glacial period (termination…
Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere…
The early Earth's environment is controversial. Climatic estimates range from hot to glacial, and inferred marine pH spans strongly alkaline to acidic. Better understanding of early climate and ocean chemistry would improve our knowledge of…
Although the Earth's orbit is never far from circular, terrestrial planets around other stars might experience substantial changes in eccentricity that could lead to climate changes, including possible "phase transitions" such as the…
Ozone in Earth's atmosphere is known to have a radiative forcing effect on climate. Motivated by geochemical evidence for one or more nearby supernovae about 2.6 million years ago, we have investigated the question of whether a supernova at…
In Arctic East Siberia many remains of mammoths have been found. In this region there is not sufficient sunlight over the year to allow for the growth of the plants on which these animals feed. Consequently the latitude of these regions…
The striking asymmetry of the ice cover during the Last Global Maximum suggests that the North Pole was in Greenland and then rapidly shifted to its present position in the Arctic See. A scenario which causes such a rapid geographic polar…
There is evidence that ice age cycles are paced by astronomical forcing, suggesting some kind of synchronisation phenomenon. Here, we identify the type of such synchronisation and explore systematically its uniqueness and robustness using a…
The obliquity of the Earth, which controls our seasons, varies by only ~2.5 degrees over ~40,000 years, and its eccentricity varies by only ~0.05 over 100,000 years. Nonetheless, these small variations influence Earth's ice ages. For…
It is shown that, the wavelet regression detrended fluctuations of the reconstructed temperature for the past 400,000 years (Antarctic ice cores data) are completely dominated by one-third subharmonic resonance, presumably related to Earth…
We analyze the stability of a low-order coupled sea ice and climate model and extract the essential physics governing the time scales of response as a function of greenhouse gas forcing. Under present climate conditions the stability is…
Multistability is a ubiquitous feature in systems of geophysical relevance and provides key challenges for our ability to predict a system's response to perturbations. Near critical transitions small causes can lead to large effects and -…
The case for a much warmer climate on the early Earth than now is presented. The oxygen isotope record in sedimentary chert and the compelling case for a near constant isotopic oxygen composition of seawater over geologic time support…
A "toy" model, simple and elementary enough for an undergraduate class, of the temperature dependence of the greenhouse (mid-IR) absorption by atmospheric water vapor implies a bistable climate system. The stable states are glaciation and…
Since its humble origins, humans have left imprints on the face of the planet. From the profound transformation unleashed by the Neolithic Revolution, about 12000 years ago, till the present, humans have reshaped the planet significantly.…
Changes that occur on our planet can be tracked back to one of two energy sources: the sun and the Earth's internal energy. The motion of tectonic plates, volcanism, mountain building and the reshaping of our planet's surface over geologic…