1. ATMOSPHERE: What Drives the Ice Age Cycle?
- Author
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Paillard, Didier
- Subjects
- *
PLEISTOCENE stratigraphic geology , *MILANKOVITCH cycles , *SOLAR radiation , *GLACIAL climates , *CLIMATE change , *PALEOCLIMATOLOGY , *GEOLOGICAL cycles , *GLOBAL radiation , *CYCLES - Abstract
The article discusses the causes of glacial cycle in earth. It has been stated according to the Milankovitch theory that the changes of insolation is the cause of ice age cycle. Insolation is described as the exposure of the earth's surface to the rays of the sun. It varies on time scales of thousands of years as a result of regular changes in earth's orbit around the sun, in the tilt of earth's axis, and in the direction of earths axis of rotation. An example has been cited that between 3 and 1 million years before present, glacial oscillations follows a 41,000-year cycle and that these oscillations correspond to insolation changes driven by obliquity changes. Other information related to the topic are discoursed in the paper.
- Published
- 2006
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