The Milankovitch theory gives us a clear indication about the long term climate change. (Tyson & Whyte, 2004:371). In this essay firstly I will be discussing how Miluntin Milankovitch collected the information about the Milankovitch cycle and came up with methods on how to calculate and also use them to explain the climate variability, secondly I will be explaining the difference between the natural variability and the anthropogenic climate change.
The Milankovitch cycle.
The Milankovitch cycle consists of three factors which are responsible for the changes that occur in the path which the earth revolve around the sun and the amount of solar radiation received by the earth at a given time, those changes have a serious impact …show more content…
It is in the elliptic form and it ranges from being more elliptical to less elliptical, when the earth orbit becomes more elliptical there will be a greater difference in the distance between the earth and the sun, at the perihelion which is the point that is close to the sun there will be an increase in the amount of the incoming solar radiation that will be striking the surface of the earth, this can also account to the reason why we are having our summer round January. The aphelion which is the point that is far from the sun there will be the decrease in the amount of the insolation received by the earth and the temperature around the earth will also decrease and because of that it will be winter on the earth and it occur around the 4 July. It takes about 100,000 years for the cycle to be completed, this will cause unequal heating of the earth resulting in climatic variation and also have a serious impact at the glacial …show more content…
Basically here we will be looking on how the axis changes its position, from perihelion to aphelion around the sun. One cycle of this process takes about 23,000 years to be completed, this shows that this movement of the axis is very slow and the development that a precession has over short-wave radiation is very small but it still has a huge impact at seasonal changes and one of the main reasons why the incoming solar radiation is not evenly distributed between the equator and the poles. The equator will receive the direct sunlight and experience a higher temperature and at the poles is the opposite, the sun strikes there at an angle and the solar radiation is low resulting in decreased temperature one of the main reason they experience long nights with short days. The ability of the earth to move from one place to another depend on this factor (precession) and also the amount of the insolation reaching the earth depend on the precession. (Loutre, 2004:5). The main purpose of precession is basically to change the position of the perihelion without disturbing the season of the earth and this will cause the date of perihelion to change in a slow