Orbital Inclination
The inclination of Earth's orbit drifts up and down relative to its present orbit. Milankovitch did not study this three-dimensional movement. This movement is known as "precession of the ecliptic" or "planetary precession".
More recent researchers noted this drift and that the orbit also moves relative to the orbits of the other planets. The invariable plane, the plane that represents the angular momentum of the Solar System, is approximately the orbital plane of Jupiter. The inclination of Earth's orbit drifts up and down relative to its present orbit with a cycle having a period of about 70,000 years. The inclination of the Earth's orbit has a 100,000-year cycle relative to the invariable plane. This is very similar to the 100,000-year eccentricity period. This 100,000-year cycle closely matches the 100,000-year pattern of ice ages.
It has been proposed that a disk of dust and other debris exists in the invariable plane, and this affects the Earth's climate through several possible means. The Earth presently moves through this plane around January 9 and July 9, when there is an increase in radar-detected meteors and meteor-related noctilucent clouds.
A study of the chronology of Antarctic ice cores using oxygen-nitrogen ratios in air bubbles trapped in the ice, which appear to respond directly to the local insolation, concluded that the climatic response documented in the ice cores was driven by northern hemisphere insolation as proposed by the Milankovitch hypothesis (Kawamura et al., Nature, 23 August 2007, vol 448, pp 912–917). This is an additional validation of the Milankovitch hypothesis by a relatively novel method, and is inconsistent with the "inclination" theory of the 100,000-year cycle.
Read more about this topic: Milankovitch Cycles, Earth’s Movements
Other articles related to "orbital inclination, orbital, inclination, inclinations":
... of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect allow a determination of the angle between the planet's orbital plane and the equator of the parent star ... is however still larger than the misalignment between the Sun's equator and the orbital plane of Jupiter, which is only 6° ...
... match of glacial/interglacial frequencies to the Milanković orbital forcing periods is so close that orbital forcing is generally accepted ... Some workers believe that the strength of the orbital forcing is too small to trigger glaciations, but feedback mechanisms like CO2 may explain this mismatch ... that cyclic changes in the Earth's orbital elements can be expressed in the glaciation record, additional explanations are necessary to explain which cycles are observed to be most important in ...
... In astrodynamics, the inclination can be computed from the orbital momentum vector (or any vector perpendicular to the orbital plane) as, where is the z-component of ... Mutual inclination of two orbits may be calculated from their inclinations to another plane using cosine rule for angles ...
... Orbital inclination is the angle formed between the plane of an orbit and the equatorial plane of the Earth ... covered by the ground track will range from –i to i, where i is the orbital inclination ... In other words, the greater the inclination of a satellite's orbit, the further north and south its ground track will pass ...
Famous quotes containing the word inclination:
“It is impossible for us to love anything without some respect to ourselves; and we only consult our own inclination and our own pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves. And yet this preference is the only thing that can render friendship perfect and sincere.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)