Earth’s Climate Change Caused by Solar Fluctuations, Orbits of Earth and Mars According to New Study

A new study produced by a University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientist and Northwestern astrophysicist links global warming/climate change and the earth’s temperature fluctuations to the amount of solar radiation, in part caused by small changes in the orbits of Earth and Mars.

In an article summarizing the scientists’ findings, which were originally published this week in the journal Nature, the University of Wisconsin-Madison notes that the study “provides the first hard proof for what scientists call the ‘chaotic solar system,’ a theory proposed in 1989 to account for small variations in the present conditions of the solar system.”

Those variations over millions of years “produce big changes in our planet’s climate.” Not only does the new discovery promise to provide a better understanding of “the mechanics of the solar system,” but also “a better understanding of the link between orbital variations and climate change over geologic time scales.”

UW-M published this summation on the groundbreaking study:

Using evidence from alternating layers of limestone and shale laid down over millions of years in a shallow North American seaway at the time dinosaurs held sway on Earth, the team led by UW–Madison Professor of Geoscience Stephen Meyers and Northwestern University Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Brad Sageman discovered the 87 million-year-old signature of a “resonance transition” between Mars and Earth. A resonance transition is the consequence of the “butterfly effect” in chaos theory. It plays on the idea that small changes in the initial conditions of a nonlinear system can have large effects over time.

In the context of the solar system, the phenomenon occurs when two orbiting bodies periodically tug at one another, as occurs when a planet in its track around the sun passes in relative proximity to another planet in its own orbit. These small but regular ticks in a planet’s orbit can exert big changes on the location and orientation of a planet on its axis relative to the sun and, accordingly, change the amount of solar radiation a planet receives over a given area. Where and how much solar radiation a planet gets is a key driver of climate.

“The impact of astronomical cycles on climate can be quite large,” explains Meyers, noting as an example the pacing of the Earth’s ice ages, which have been reliably matched to periodic changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit, and the tilt of our planet on its axis.

TheGlobalDispatch