On the origins of the ice ages : insolation forcing, age models, and nonlinear climate change

This thesis revolves about the relationship between orbital forcing and climate variability. To place paleo and modern climate variability in context, the spectrum of temperature variability is estimated from time-scales of months to hundreds of thou- sands of years using a patchwork of proxy and instrumental records. There is an energetic background continuum and rich spatial structure associated with temperature variability which both scale according to simple spectral power-laws. To complement the spatial and temporal analysis of temperature variability, a description of the full insolation forcing is also developed using Legendre polynomials to represent the spatial modes of variability and singular vectors to represent seasonal and long-term changes. The leading four spatial and temporal modes describe over 99% of the insolation variability making this a relatively simple and compact description of the full insolation forcing. Particular attention is paid to the insolation variations resulting from the precession of the equinoxes. There is no mean annual insolation variability associated with precession - precession only modulates the seasonal cycle. Nonlinear rectification of the seasonal cycle generates precession-period variability, and such rectification naturally occurs in the climate system but also results from the seasonality inherent to many climate proxies. One must distinguish this latter instrumental effect from true climate responses. Another potential source of spurious low-frequency variability results from the stretching and squeezing of an age-model so that noise in a record is made to align with an orbital signal.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Huybers, Peter, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Carl Wunsch.

• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/88360

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/88360