Washington : Earth’s tilt that shifts every 41,000 years influences climate change by affecting the world’s heaviest rain-belt, a new study that analysed data from the past 282,000 years has found, reports PTI.
Researchers showed for the first time a connection between the Earth’s tilt, called obliquity, and the movement of a low pressure band of clouds that is the Earth’s largest source of heat and moisture – the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ.
“I took the data and put it through a mathematical prism so I could look at the patterns and that’s where we see the obliquity cycle, that 41,000-year cycle.
From that, we can go in and look at how it compares to other records,” said Kristine DeLong from the Louisiana State University in US.
With research collaborators at the University of Science and Technology of China and National Taiwan University, DeLong looked at sediment cores from off the coast of Papua New Guinea and stalagtite samples from ancient caves in China.
DeLong’s data analysis showed obliquity in both the paleontological record and computer model data.
The standard assumptions about how the variations in the Earth’s orbit influences changes in climate are called Milankovitch cycles.
