05-25-2005, 02:49 PM
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El Destructor II
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: 11th& Sansom
Posts: 22,654
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Global Cooling
Quote:
Skipping beats
The question, then, that Huybers and Wunsch had to answer: How does the 40,000-year tilt cycle make a 100,000-year glacial cycle? A more careful sediment dating has shown is that the time between ice ages may on average be 100,000 years, but the durations are sometimes 80,000 years, sometimes 120,000 years -- both numbers are divisible by 40,000. It appears there was not a mass melting every time the tilt reached its maximum.
Did You Know?
"The Earth is skipping obliquity beats," Huybers explained.
The planet only recently started missing melting opportunities. Although the researchers have no corroborating evidence, they hypothesize that the skipping is due to an overall cooling of the planet.
The last major glacial thaw was 10,000 years ago, which means that the Earth is scheduled to head into another ice age. Whether human influences could reverse this, Huybers was hesitant to speculate. Other researchers have found evidence that the process of climate warming can set up conditions that create a global chill.
"What we have here is a great laboratory for seeing how climate changes naturally," he said. "But this is a 100,000-year cycle, whereas global warming is happening a thousand times faster.”
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http://www.livescience.com/forcesofn...arth_tilt.html
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