Scientists have long argued that the periodic fluctuations in the Earth’s climate are due to cyclical changes in the distribution of sunlight reaching its surface. This is due to the rotation around the axis, the ellipticity of the orbit and the subtle gravitational interactions with other planets, asteroids and bodies of the Solar system.

Planetary routes change over time, and this can change the duration of cycles. Because of this, it is difficult for scientists to unravel what caused many ancient climate changes. And, the farther into the past, the stronger this problem.

Tiny changes in the movement of one planet affect the rest. After millennia, these changes resonate with each other, and the whole system is transformed in a way that cannot be predicted using even the most advanced mathematical calculations.

-Paul Olsen, a geologist and paleontologist at the Earth Observatory of Lamont-Doherty at Columbia University (USA)

Until now, researchers could calculate the relative movements of the planets and their possible impact on the Earth’s climate with sufficient accuracy in just 60 million years, a negligible amount compared to 4.6 billion years of history.

However, now Paul Olsen and his team pushed the boundaries to a record 200 million years ago. In 2018, comparing the periodic changes in ancient sediments collected in Arizona and New Jersey, the researchers identified a 405,000-year cycle of the Earth’s orbit, which apparently has not changed in the last 200 million years — a kind of metronome from which all other cycles be measured.

Using the same sediments, in a new study presented in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, geologists report finding an even longer climatic period of 2.4 million years, which was previously 1.75 million years.

Thanks to these two large experiments, scientists learned that changes in tropical climates from wet to dry during the time of the first dinosaurs, about 252 to 199 million years ago, occurred in orbital cycles of about 20 thousand, 100 thousand and 400 thousand years, as well as a much longer cycle of 1.75 million years, which has now sunk into history and is 2.4 million years old. According to the team, this difference is caused by a gravitational dance between Earth and Mars. “This difference is an imprint of the chaos of the solar system,” says Paul Olsen.

To verify the data on the influence of the Red Planet on the Earth’s climate, the scientific team set out to drill samples at higher latitudes from the ancient lake behind the Palaearctic or Antarctic circles.

If the data collected allows us to construct high-quality climate models of the Earth, they can be applied in the study of the climate of ancient Mars and other rocky worlds. “But more exciting is the ability to test such contradictory theories as the possible existence of a dark matter plane in our Galaxy, through which the Solar System periodically passes,” the authors of the study report.

Paleoclimatic studies not only reveal the past, but are directly related to the present. Although the climate largely depends on the orbit, it is also influenced by the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Now we are approaching the time when CO2 levels can be as high as 200 million years ago. Combining data will give climatologists the opportunity to see the interaction of all factors, as well as help in the search for life on Mars and inhabited exoplanets.

Earth's climate depends on neighboring planets
Click To Tweet

The post Earth’s climate depends on neighboring planets appeared first on Upcosmos.com.