5 ms·
Italian cave makes sense of the change in Earth’s ice age rhythm
- chrisco255 7y agoWhile the warming episodes do seem to align with peaks in the normalized Milankovitch cycle curves...there are plenty of peaks on that graph that occurred during severe cold episodes. What's the explanation for those glacial peaks? This doesn't seem like a complete picture. The article hints at something within the climate system having an effect. My wonder is what influence geothermal has had on ice ages. In particular, deep sea hydrothermal events. Do these events periodically get disrupted and cause less heat to be released into the oceans?
- sradman 7y agoSix spheres of climate: 1. Atmosphere, 2. Biosphere, 3. Hydrosphere, 4. Cryosphere, 5. Lithosphere (tectonic plates), and 6. Solarsphere (Milankovich Cycles). This is a fantastic article that helps fill in the puzzle of glacial termination/reglaciation. The LR04 Benthic Stack is the overarching story and it is nicely complemented by Arctic/Antarctic ice core data, Chinese cave data, and now Italian cave data. I think it is the feedback between the configuration of the tectonic plates of the Lithosphere and the ocean currents of the Hydrosphere that controlled the transitions that first initiated the 23k Cryosphere glaciation cycles and the subsequent 41k and 100? K cycles. The isolation of Antarctica, the connection of North and South America, the closing/opening of the Mediterranean, etc.