INTRODUCTION

What Are the Milankovitch Cycles?

The Milankovitch cycles describe how relatively slight changes in Earth's movement & affect
the planet's climate. Milankovitch cycles describe the collective effects of changes in the
Earth's movements on its climate over thousands of years. The term is named for Serbian
geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković.

A Serbian astrophysicist who began investigating the cause of Earth's ancient ice ages in
the early 1900s, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Earth
experienced it's most recent ice ages during the Pleistocene epoch, which lasted from 2.6
million years ago to 11,700 years ago. For thousands of years at a time, even the more
temperate regions of the globe were covered with glaciers and ice sheets.

To determine how Earth could experience such vast changes in climate over time,
Milankovitch incorporated data about the variations of Earth's position with the timeline of
the ice ages during the Pleistocene. He studied Earth's variations for the last 600,000 years
and calculated the varying amounts of solar radiation due to Earth's changing orbital
parameters.

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Milankovitch's calculations and charts, which were published in the 1920s and are still used
today to understand past and future climate, led him to conclude that there are three different
positional cycle each with its own cycle length, that influence the climate on Earth:

1. the eccentricity of Earth's orbit

2. the planet's axial tilt
3. wobble (precession) of its axis
Eccentricity

The path of the Earth’s orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, but an ellipse. This
elliptical shape changes from less elliptical (nearly a perfect circle) to more elliptical and
back, and is due to the gravitational fields of neighboring planets (particularly the large ones
-Jupiter and Saturn). The measure of the shape deviation from being a circle is called its
eccentricity.

That is, the larger the eccentricity, the greater is its deviation from a circle. Thus, in terms of
eccentricity, the Earth’s orbit undergoes a cyclical change from less eccentric to more
eccentric and back. One complete cycle for this kind of variation lasts for about 100,000
years.

Source: https://www.google.co.in/url

The Earth's orbit slightly changes its eccentricity over the course of 100,000 years from
nearly 0 to 0.07 and back again, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. When the Earth's
orbit has a higher eccentricity, the planet's surface receives 20 to 30 percent more solar
radiation when it's at perihelion (the shortest distance between the Earth and sun each orbit)
than when it is at aphelion (the largest distance between the Earth and sun each orbit). When
the Earth's orbit has a low eccentricity, there is very little difference in the amount of solar
radiation that is received between perihelion and aphelion.

Today, the eccentricity of Earth's orbit is 0.017. At perihelion, which occurs on or around
Jan. 3 each year, Earth's surface receives about 6 percent more solar radiation than at
aphelion, which occurs on or around July 4.
Axial Tilt

We know the earth is spinning around its own axis, which is the reason why we have night
and day. However, this axis is not upright. Rather, the tilt of the Earth's axis, also known as
obliquity, varies between 21.5 and 24.5 degrees. These angles are measured between the
angle of the axis to an imaginary line normal (perpendicular) to the Earth’s plane of orbit. A
complete cycle for the axial tilt lasts for about 41,000 years

Source:https://energyeducation.ca/

Greater tilts mean that the hemispheres closer to the Sun, i.e., during summer, will experience
a larger amount of heat than when the tilt is less. In other words, regions in the extreme upper
and lower hemispheres will experience the hottest summers and the coldest winters during a
maximum tilt.

When the axis is at its minimal tilt, the amount of solar radiation doesn't change much
between summer and winter for much of Earth's surface and therefore, seasons are less
severe. This means that summer at the poles is cooler, which allows snow and ice to persist
through summer and into winter, eventually building up into enormous ice sheets.

Source:http://www.zafzaf.it
Precession
Earth wobbles just slightly as it spins on its axis, similarly to when a spinning top begins to
slow down. This wobble, known as precession, is primarily caused by the gravity of the sun
and moon pulling on Earth's equatorial bulges. The wobble doesn't change the tilt of Earth's
axis, but the orientation changes. Over about 24,000 years, Earth wobbles around in a
complete circle.

Now, and for the past several thousands of years, Earth's axis has been pointed north more or
less toward Polaris, also known as the North Star. But Earth's gradual precessional wobble
means that Polaris isn't always the North Star. About 5,000 years ago the Earth was pointed
more toward another star, called Thubin. And, in approximately 12,000 years, the axis will
have traveled a bit more around its precession circle and will point toward Vega, which will
become the next North Star.

Source: https://epm.ethz.ch/research/earth

Due to this wobble a climatically significant alteration must take place. When the axis is
tilted towards Vega the positions of the Northern Hemisphere winter and summer solstices
will coincide with the aphelion and perihelion, respectively. This means that the Northern
Hemisphere will experience winter when the Earth is furthest from the Sun and summer when
the Earth is closest to the Sun. This coincidence will result in greater seasonal contrasts.
MILANKOVITCH CYCLES AND CLIMATE
Solar radiation is the most important source of energy and it is practically the only source of
energy for driving the climatic processes. The astronomical climate theory permits us to
calculate the radiation, but this is not enough for the development of a theory which is
sufficiently detailed to reconstruct the ancient climate accurately. The reason for this is the
complexity of the climate system and our limited knowledge of it.

The insolation values which were calculated by Milankovitch and later scientists (Vernekar,
1972; Berger, 1978) are ’’ top of the atmosphere ” values, meaning that they represent the
intensity of the solar radiation before it passes through the atmosphere. When radiation
penetrates the atmosphere, it is partly absorbed and partly reflected by the earth’s surface and
by internal layers like clouds in the atmosphere, for example. The proportion of radiation
which is lost by reflection back into space is called the albedo. The short wave radiation of
sunlight is absorbed by the surface of the earth and this in turn emits longer wavelength
radiation, which heats the atmosphere.

Milankovitch estimated the temperature of the surface by treating it as a black body,

following Kirchhof’s law which gives the relationship between absorption and emission as a
function of temperature and wavelength. The temperature values were transformed into
climatic values which were expressed in terms of a nominal geographical latitude.
Milankovitch did not attempt to treat climate as a dynamic system. Modern calculations
investigating the distribution of effective radiation on the earth’s surface are due to Tricot and
Berger (1988) who used the delta-Eddington approximation of radiation transfer in a three
layer model. The radiation reaching the earth’s surface was plotted as a function of months
and geographical latitude. It has already been shown that according to the astronomical
theory, the top of the atmosphere radiation maximum is at the north pole during the northern
hemisphere Summer and at the south pole during the northern hemisphere Winter.

The earth’s surface at the polar regions receives less radiation. This is because the attenuation
caused by the atmosphere is stronger in the polar regions and also because the angle of
incidence of the sunlight is lower and therefore the passage through the atmosphere is much
longer. The maximum radiation on the surface therefore, is in the equatorial regions but there
are submaxima in the polar areas Because the albedo due to cloud and ice distribution is
different in different latitudes, the amount of the absorbed radiation is different from the
incident radiation.
INSOLATION
According to the Milankovitch theory, the secular variation of the orbital elements will
change the amount of solar energy which reaches the earth at various times and this will
cause a change of climate. The amount of radiation which a planet receives from the sun is
called the insolation and its intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance of
the planet from the sun
SUMMARY
We are very familiar with the fact that our climate undergo strong seasonal variation. The
reason for this is the well known movement of our planet around the sun in an orbit called
elliptic. Since the earth’s axis of rotation is inclined at an angle of approximately 23 degrees,
the northern hemisphere receive more sun during the northern hemisphere is winter. The
two days in the sidereal year during which both hemisphere receive equal amount of
sunlight are called equinoxes.

The position of the summer & winter solstices, which are the longest and shortest day in the
year, since the sun is in the focal point of an elliptical orbit, there is position where the earth
is closest to the sun called perihelion (P) and point of greatest distance from the sun, called
the aphelion ( A). If all the quantities which determine the season were to remain fixed. The
climates over a whole year would remain constant for all time. In fact, the orbit of all the
planet including earth, undergo variation.
 REFERENCE

 Schwarzacher W. (year-1993 ) Cyclostratigraphy and the Milankovitch theory. Elsevier

science Amsterdam, Netherlands. Ppg.239.
 https://www.universetoday.com/
 https://www.google.co./
 https://thoughtco.com/
 www.Indiana.edu./
 CONTENT

1. Introduction
2. What are Milankovitch cycles?
3. Three factors of Milankovitch cycles
4. Milankovitch cycles and climates
5. Insolation
6. Summery
7. References