Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian.Pearson
I was just wondering if the Earth's wobble affected weather.
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Which wobble?
One amounts to about 10" of arc and was most likely caused early in Earth's history when something cleaned its clock. Whatever it was, it was no asteroid. It had to be the size of a small moon. If you are doing math for astronomy or astrology, you need to account for it when finding the longitude of planets.
The other wobble is I think Chandler's Wobble and has something to do with Earth's core.
And there's a wobble associated with the Mankovitch Cycle which is based on the Earth's polar axis in relation to the Plane of the Ecliptic. That causes Earth to move from about 21° to about 24°. It is very useful in dating certain types of temples known as solstitial temples. Many temples are equinoctal, that is they are oriented to the equator. However some are solstitial, meaning they are oriented to the Solstice Points. On the day of the Solstice, you could open the doors to the temple and the Sun and mid-day would shine all the back into the "holy of holies" behind the altar.
Temples in the northern hemisphere are oriented to the Sun's northing point (the Solstice Point) ie the Summer Solstice, while temples in the southern hemisphere are oriented to the Sun's southing point (their Summer Solstice but our Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere).
Because we know the movement rate, we can date solstitial temples (it's called archeao-astronomy). The German who invented the method accurately dated a number of solstitial temples in Egypt, Northern Europe and Asia. He gave dates of circa 10,000 BCE, circa 4,000 BCE and circa 2000 CE for the building of Machu Piccu which caused an uproar because we all know the Land Bridge theory is valid, yada, yada, blah, blah and of course that violated a lot of people's pre-conceived ideas of the development of civilizations in various parts of the world.
Anyway, back to weather, this wobble has a great bearing on the Earth's overall Albedo. Albedo is a measure of reflectivity.
The Earth is 75% water, and there are deserts and lots of areas that are either snow covered or glaciated.
Let's pick an area in the Pacific Ocean, any area will do. Solar radiation strikes the surface of the ocean. If the angle of incidence is great, then Albedo is high and a good portion of that energy is reflected back into space.
But if the angle of incidence is low, then Albedo is low (or lower) and it absorbs more of the Sun's energy.
And what's important to understand is that a mere 1' of arc will affect millions of square miles of ocean and change its Albedo so that it either reflects more energy back into space, or absorbs more energy.
If the Earth had angle of 0° then the north and south polar regions would be almost parallel to the energy coming from the Sun and any snow, ice or water would reflect the greatest portion of energy back into space.
But that isn't the case because of the Earth's axial tilt or inclination the polar regions can actually absorb the energy when the Earth is at is maximum, about 24°.
Surely you can see how that would affect Earth's weather, by absorbing more energy, or reflecting more energy, and that's what Mankovitch says so it's one of the three parts of his Cycle.
One part is the Earth's Perigee, that is the closest the Earth comes to the Sun. We're told our distance is about 93.5 Million miles, but that's just an average. Over a period of 100,000 years, the Earth moves closer to the Sun, then it moves farther away from the Sun. Since we haven't been around that long, we don't know what those distances are exactly.
However, in December 2012, the Earth's Perigee (the Earth's orbit isn't a perfect circle it's somewhat elliptical) will be closer to the Sun than it ever has in known human history.
From that point on, the Earth will spend the next 100,000 years moving farther away from the Sun, and then it will spend the next 100,000 years moving back to the point we are now.
Mankovitch says that Cycle affects weather on Earth (and it makes a helluva lot of sense to me).
The inter-glacial warming period ends December 2012 and the Earth will move back to normal Earth as depicted here:
That is the real Earth and what our home
really is like 99.9% of the time (geologically speaking).
Unless there is some massive tectonic/volcanic activity the creates a major out-gassing and spews massive CO2 into the atmosphere leading back to the days of the dinosaurs when it never snowed and there wasn't any water ice anywhere on Earth (even the poles were free and clear), that's what Earth will be like except for the small inter-glacial periods, like the one in which we are now (and this one is extended because of a cataclysmic event 12,000 years ago).
Starting about 10,000 years from, Canadians (if they still exist) will be illegally immigrating to the US to avoid the glaciers which will start moving south driving them out of their homes.
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