Posted on 03/26/2024 4:12:09 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Mars-caused changes in Earth’s orbit impacts ocean currents and temperatures every 2.4 million years and is known as an “astronomical grand cycle.”
Anyone with an inkling of knowledge of geologic history appreciates Earth’s climate is constantly changing.
This change has many reasons, including solar cycles, volcanic activity, and asteroids.
New research shows another potentially significant player in Earth’s climate change cycles: Mars, our neighboring planet.
Geological evidence tracing back more than 65 million years and taken from hundreds of sites across the world suggests that deep-sea currents have repeatedly gone through periods of being either stronger or weaker. This happens every 2.4 million years and is known as an “astronomical grand cycle.”
The stronger currents, known as “giant whirlpools” or eddies, may reach the seafloor at the deepest parts of the ocean, known as the abyss. These powerful currents then erode away at the large pieces of sediment that accumulate during calmer periods in the cycle, according to research published Tuesday (March 12) in the journal Nature Communications.
These cycles happen to coincide with the timing of known gravitational interactions between Earth and Mars as the two planets orbit the sun, the study found.
“The gravity fields of the planets in the solar system interfere with each other and this interaction, called a resonance, changes planetary eccentricity, a measure of how close to circular their orbits are,” study co-author Dietmar Müller, a professor of geophysics at the University of Sydney, said in a statement.
Researchers have only recently been able to gather the data from deep sea sediments, thereby discovering the climate pattern related to the orbital interaction between the two planets. Müller explained how the orbits of Earth and Mars can cause shifts in the oceans.
“The gravity fields of the planets in the solar system interfere with each other, and this interaction, called a resonance, changes planetary eccentricity, a measure of how close to circular their orbits are,” he said.
On Earth, this has resulted in periods during which our planet received more radiation from the sun, thus creating warmer climates. The 2.4-million-year cycles contained “breaks” in the deep-sea record, and these breaks indicate periods of more vigorous ocean circulation.
The team’s findings indicate that the circular movement of water causing small whirlpools, or “eddies,” in the oceans’ depths was an important factor in the warming seas.
These eddies may have helped offset ocean stagnation, which many scientists predict would follow the slowing of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). AMOC is a vast system of ocean currents that carries warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic Ocean. It is responsible for driving the Gulf Stream and maintaining warm climates in Europe.
Changes in the strength or stability of the AMOC have the potential to significantly impact global climate patterns.
For example, a weakening or collapse of the AMOC could lead to cooler temperatures in parts of Europe and altered weather patterns around the world. Scientists study the AMOC closely to better understand its dynamics and how it might respond to factors such as climate change.
“The freezing and melting of sea ice is not the only mechanism influencing deep ocean circulation. Deep-ocean eddies are predicted to intensify in a warming, more energetic climate system as major storms become more frequent,” Müller said....
Thanks MtnClimber.
I remember being taught in grade school (50s-60s) that we we were in a warm period in between periods of glaciation, and that we would be re-entering a new glacial period in the next 10-20 thousand years or so.
O-D; article about Milankovitch cycles:
Science Daily Why Ice ages occur every 100,000 years or so. "The Milankovitch cycles "The explanation for the cyclical alternation of ice and warm periods stems from Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch (1879-1958), who calculated the changes in Earth's orbit and the resulting insolation on Earth, thus becoming the first to describe that the cyclical changes in insolation are the result of an overlapping of a whole series of cycles: the tilt of Earth's axis fluctuates by around two degrees in a 41,000-year cycle. Moreover, Earth's axis gyrates in a cycle of 26,000 years, much like a spinning top. Finally, Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun changes in a cycle of around 100,000 years in two respects: on the one hand, it changes from a weaker elliptical (circular) form into a stronger one. On the other hand, the axis of this ellipsis turns in the plane of Earth's orbit. The spinning of Earth's axis and the elliptical rotation of the axes cause the day on which Earth is closest to the sun (perihelion) to migrate through the calendar year in a cycle of around 20,000 years: currently, it is at the beginning of January; in around 10,000 years, however, it will be at the beginning of July.
Based on his calculations, in 1941 Milankovitch postulated that insolation in the summer characterises the ice and warm periods at sixty-five degrees north, a theory that was rejected by the science community during his lifetime. From the 1970s, however, it gradually became clearer that it essentially coincides with the climate archives in marine sediments and ice cores. Nowadays, Milankovitch's theory is widely accepted. "Milankovitch's idea that insolation determines the ice ages was right in principle," says Blatter. "However, science soon recognised that additional feedback effects in the climate system were necessary to explain ice ages. We are now able to name and identify these effects accurately."
The efforts to "Stop Global Warming"-- if successful--might be more likely to propel us back into an early Ice Age, not a good thing.
Yes, and love will steer the stars. Now I’ll have that stupid song running through my head until I listen to something else.
Earth's wild ride: Our voyage through the Milky Way
"Interstellar gas permeates the Milky Way, but not evenly. The solar system happens now to inhabit an unusually empty patch of space, the local bubble, with only one hydrogen atom per five cubic centimetres of space. In the past we must have drifted through much denser gas clouds, including some more than 100 light years across in whose cold and dark interiors hydrogen forms itself into molecules.
In such nebulae, Earth may have caught a cold. Usually, the solar system’s interior is protected from harsh interstellar radiation by the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that flows deep into space, forming a huge electromagnetic shield called the heliosphere. When the interstellar gas gets denser, the solar wind can’t push as far, and the heliosphere shrinks. Above a density of around 1000 molecules per cubic centimetre, it will contract to within Earth’s orbit. That might happen every few hundred million years.
The accumulation of hydrogen in Earth’s high atmosphere would alter its chemistry, creating a reflective cloud layer, while dust could mimic the shading effect of sulphate aerosols from volcanic eruptions. Alex Pavlov of the University of Colorado, Boulder, says the dust alone could trigger a global ice age, or “snowball Earth” (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 32, p L03705).
We know Earth has suffered such episodes, including big chills some 650 and 700 million years ago. Their cause remains obscure. It could have been the weathering of mountains that pulled carbon dioxide from the air, or volcanic eruptions, or changes to Earth’s orbit around the sun – or a black cloud in space.
Will any scientist ever find and blame the sun for any of this?
I’m old enough to remember the “smog days” during the late 60’s and early 70’s. The skies where cloudy for days, almost an entire summer one year. Here, in N.J. we have blue skies again, have for several years now. The U.S. has done a great job in cleaning up, not only the air, but streams, rivers and lakes. We are not yet pollution free, but have made much more progress than most other countries. Other countries such as China, India, Russia, many African ones, and some South American countries have a long way to go.
You are soo-o-o-o correct. Thank you! I and your other readers appreciate what you have provided!
Thanks, I try.
Michael Mann is going to have to take some of the curve out of his hockey schtick.
“HOW DARE MARS!!!”, said a well known climatologist.
Quick! Call Algore. He’s going to have a run on carbon credits.
In addition to specific cycles, there are also occasional major impacts from huge volcanic eruptions. The recent major eruptions by the Hunga-Tonga volcano which threw huge volumes of water into our upper atmosphere may be one reason for the pattern of droughts and floods experienced throughout the world these past two years. In a few years we will have a better analysis of those effects as the water vapor comes out of the upper atmosphere.
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere/
If you look at the blue line in the graph at comment #2, you will see that at around 75,000 years ago there was a sharp drop in the blue line, indicating a severe fall in temperature. This was caused by the volcano Toba Indonesia which left a caldera around 18 miles by 65 miles in dimension. This sharp drop in temperature apparently caused a severe decline in the human populations. Scientists have calculated that possibly only 10,000 pairs of breeding homo sapients survived the Nuclear Wintor that occurred, which can be determined by our studies of DNA. Almost no human remains have been discovered for the period between 75k and 50k years ago.
https://www.thecollector.com/mount-toba-supervolcano-wipe-out-humans/
You will note that eventually the blue line rose to continue the downward slope that was occurring before the major Toba event.
Volcanism is analogous to acne. The Sun is overwhelmingly responsible for the climate of the Earth.
Non-cyclic occasional ‘black swan’ impact events have caused all the glaciation events of the past two million or so years, beginning with the Eltanin impact (perhaps impact cluster).
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