Discovery of earth's climate patterns (John Izzo)

On April 6, 2010, Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a method to figure out why the changes in earth’s climate occur. By studying ocean sediments, Lisiecki and a team of scientists were able to trace the earth’s climate patterns millions of years into the past. They discovered a pattern that gave a direct link between earth’s historic climate changes and its changing orbit.

The eccentricity of earth’s orbit around the sun changes approximately every 100,000 years, becoming either more round or more elliptical. After the study of the ocean sediments, scientists found that a direct connection with this orbital pattern is the glaciation of the planet, which also occurs every 100,000 years. Because it is extremely unlikely that these two major events would not be related in some way, this became the basis of future of earth’s climate. The most intriguing discovery was that the planet seemed to go through periods of heavy glaciation during the intervals in which eccentricity was experiencing the weakest change, and vice versa.

In relating these studies to our class discussions, the effect of additional greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere can potentially have a major effect on the earth’s glaciation cycle. These additional gasses are causing the earth’s average temperature to increase each year, and it eventually may not be able to cool down to the proper temperature for glaciation to occur. As the study shows, this planet has been able to cool in response to its orbital changes for millions of years, but additional greenhouse gasses in all likelihood will alter this cycle dramatically.

The orbital patterns theoretically would decrease the amount of heat that reaches earth. Because of the industrialization our planet has gone through within the past 150 years, much more carbon dioxide has been added into the atmosphere due to burning of fossil fuels. This massive increase in greenhouse gasses has enabled our planet to retain much more heat than it has in the past. Eventually, the planet’s natural cooling process will not able to keep up anymore.

Source –

University of California - Santa Barbara (2010, April 6). Geologist connects regular changes of Earth's orbital cycle to changes in climate. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/04/100406133707.htm