Why do we need Revised Milankovitch cycles?

The Milankovitch cycles have been taken into account in some climate studies, but so far without a clear definitive conclusion. In this chapter I will show some graphs that can be used as input in the discussions about the exact role of the Milankovitch cycles on Earth’s climate. I call those graphs the ”Revised Milankovitch cycles” because of 2 reasons:

• Milankovitch did not study planetary precession (opens in a new tab). It was discovered more recently and measured, relative to Earth's orbit (= ecliptic), to have a period of about 70,000 years (and ~100,000 against ICRF). ). I call this type of precession Inclination precession. The current value – according to Wikipedia (opens in a new tab) - in 2,000 AD is ~1.57869° (I come to a more exact number of ~1.5786889°). We need to take this movement into account as well. In my view this is actually the MAIN driver for the climate on Earth as researched by e.g. Muller and McDonald (1997). For more details see this paper (opens in a new tab) and this paper (opens in a new tab) and this paper (opens in a new tab) about Orbital inclination, not eccentricity being the driver for the 100-kyr glacial cycle.

• The eccentricity, obliquity and Apsidal precession numbers are different according to the Dummy Universe compared to the original Milankovitch study. We need to use the right input numbers.

Additionally what is good to know upfront: The 3D Dummy Universe Simulation only shows the bigger movements. So the fact we are coming from a small ice-age is not added in the simulation. Feel free to make modifications to show these type of movements as well.

Climate debate

But maybe to start off, I would first like to give my reflection on the current state of the climate change debate. First of all, the words “never” and “records” in climate debates really only means “since 1880 AD”, the commonly recognized year from which we have trustworthy weather measurements records. That is not that long compared to the precession cycles we are talking about in this book.

Additionally, since we are coming from a small ice age, taking the year 1880 AD as starting point will automatically result in wrongly “global warming” conclusions. The timelines are way too short to be able to make such statements.

Also taking the increase of CO2 PPM as a baseline of the “global warming” discussions is in my view incorrect. As can be quite clearly concluded, the amount of CO2 FOLLOWS the temperature cycles, and there is (so far) no conclusive evidence it is driving it.

The level of CO2 in the air is not that high compared to earlier era’s:

Ever since ~10,000 BC we are in a relative warm period and as historic records show, in one moment in time will move to a new ice age. The only way to prevent this, is if we use climate changing techniques. The current climate change agenda that wants to prevents it getting warmer might therefore just be counterproductive in keeping the climate the same.

But I also have to be humble, I do not know it. And I am sure no one really knows what is going on, what the exact cause is and how the trend will continue in the future and what is best.

Let’s move on to some calculations.

Current version Milankovitch cycles

This picture shows all the currently known inputs for the Milankovitch cycles. You can find it on the internet on a lot of sites.

Revised Milankovitch cycles

I have modified the picture to give an overview of all the movements as presented in this book.

As can be see all current theories about precession, eccentricity, obliquity, inclination, etc. ARE NOT CONNECTED to each other at all.

My conclusion would be precession, eccentricity, obliquity, inclination, etc. ARE CONNECTED to each other

That is the difference.

More background information

This picture I found on the internet and shows the temperature in the past. You can find it on a lot of websites (opens in a new tab). This one particularly is coming from data collected from the Vostok Ice Core. You can see a ~305k years pattern.

In the below 2 pictures you see the temperature variations on Antarctica. I have added the Inclination precession cycle in the picture to show the pattern.

In the below 2 pictures you see the CO2 variations on Antarctica. I have added the Inclination precession cycle in the picture to show the pattern.

Hopefully with the information as provided in the Excel, this book and the 3D dummy universe simulation, which can be considered as an add-ons to the currently known Milankovitch cycles, scientist can gain better understanding of the effect of all precession movement on the climate cycles.