The Universal Timekeepers: Reconstructing History Atom by Atom by David J. Helfand

Author:David J. Helfand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI074000, Science/Physics/Atomic & Molecular, SCI066000, Science/Time
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Long-Term Climate Influencers

As the data above unambiguously show, human activity is significantly altering the temperature of the planet. Yet we know that much larger temperature fluctuations have occurred in the past; over the last billion years we’ve seen both a snowball Earth nearly completely covered in ice and a fully tropical Earth with palm trees growing in Greenland. Clearly then, natural forces can also affect the energy balance of the planet. We begin by exploring the dominant causes of temperature change over the past million years prior to human intervention.

The Earth’s motion through space is dominated by the gravitational influence of the Sun. Our planet traverses its slightly elliptical orbit once every 365.24255 days. But the Earth and the Sun are not the only two bodies in the solar system, and the Earth feels mutual pulls and pushes from the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and the other planets. As a result, it experiences subtle and roughly periodic changes in the shape of its orbit, the tilt of its rotation axis with respect to the plane of this orbit, and the orientation of its axis in space (see figure 11.2). The magnitude of these effects and their relationship to Earth’s climate were first calculated by the Serbian engineer, mathematician, and astronomer Milutin Milankovic.

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