What are astronomical rhythms and how do they effect the climate ?
The orientation of earth in space changes regularly over millions of years as it circles around the sun. Earth’s tilted spin axis wobbles like an unsteady top and the tilt of the spin axis increases and decreases again over less than 40.000 years. Further every 100,000 to 400,000 year cycles, Earth’s orbit around the sun expands and contracts from more circular to elliptical paths. These rhythms are believed to set the timings of ice ages by effecting the distribution of sunlight over the Earth’s surface. Over the passed million years these climate changes became about a 100,000 years long. What scientific measurements are witnessing now is that we could be in for an extended interglacial period and that increased atmospheric CO2 levels caused by human intervention could rapidly increase the temperatures to unprecedented levels .
