4 ms·
This is a strange result -- it's saying that an ice age could be caused by a change in sunlight. With made up numbers, it's saying that a change from 100W/m2 to
by wwarner 6y ago
This is a strange result -- it's saying that an ice age could be caused by a change in sunlight. With made up numbers, it's saying that a change from 100W/m2 to 60W/m2 could cause an ice age, even though a stable regime at 60W/m2 would not create an ice age. Even if it just claims that a change in temp speeds the onset of an ice age that's surprising to me.
- brandmeyer 6y agoThe positive gain from albedo feedback has been well-known for quite some time. Its part of why the Arctic is heating up so much faster than the rest of the world right now. The negative gain from weathering and volcanism is also quite well-known. The authors of this paper put 2 and 2 together and showed that you only need a brief period of reduced insolation to trigger a snowball earth, and that once insolation returns to normal it can stay in the snowball state for much longer.
- tuatoru 6y agoHysteresis[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis