Milankovitch Cycles and Climate Variations

Dr. Peter Carter, Paul Beckwith and Regina Valdez discuss the Milankovitch cycles which drive natural climate variations taking place over periods ranging from approximately 20,000 to 400,000 years.

This video was recorded on January 25th, 2023, and published on February 19th, 2023.

Some of the topics discussed:

• The man who discovered the cycles, Milutin Milanković whose name is commonly anglicised as Milankovitch and the work he did in the 1920s.
• How the Milankovitch cycles drive a natural variation in the Earth’s climate over 100,000 year cycles through three main factors affecting the movement of the Earth being eccentricity, tilt and precession.
• How Milankovitch’s work was influenced by the work on ice cores and on sediment cores in the ocean floor that showed there had been periods of warming and periods of cooling.
• How Richard Alley was one of the leading names with respect to research being done on ice cores which have given us a way to determine the Earth’s temperature from before we had thermometers and how these indirect methods of determining temperatures in the distant past are referred to as proxies.
• How CO2 concentrations have never gone higher than 300 parts per million in the past 1.5 million years and how methane never went above 800 parts per billion.
• How Milankovitch, one of Serbia’s most famous persons, is still in the shadow of Nikola Tesla.
• and more . . .

Links

• Milankovitch cycles

• Global Warming - Milankovitch Cycles

• Milutin Milancović

• World Meteorlogical Organization

Regular Panelists:

• Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute

• Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University

• Regina Valdez - Program Director, Climate Reality Project, NYC. GreenFaith Fellow and LEED Green Associate

Video Production:

• Charles Gregoire – Climate Reality Leader, Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum

• Heidi Brault - Climate Reality Leader, BA(Psychology), Library & Information Technician Diploma - Video production and website assistant - Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP28 Team Lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum.

Attributions:

Background Music:

• Title: Through the City II
• Author: Crowander
• Source: Free Music Archive
• License: BY-NC 4.0

Image and Video:

• Image and Video Attributions