Botkin Environmental Science Earth as Living Planet 8th txtbk

446 CHAPTER 20 The Atmosphere, Climate, and Global Warming
Milankovich attempted explain ice ages through
changes in solar radiation reaching Earth. His contribution
is very significant. While Milankovitch cycles are
consistent with the timing of variations in glacial and inter
glacial change, they were not intented to not account
for all the large-scale climatic variations in the geologic record.
It is perhaps best to think of these cycles as response
of climate to orbital variations.
Once Earth receives energy from the sun, Earth’s surface
features affect the climate. These earthly factors that affect,
and are in turn affected by, regional and global temperature
changes include warmer ice-sheet temperatures; changes in
vegetation; changes in atmospheric gases, such as carbon dioxide,
methane, and nitrous oxide; and particulates and aerosols.
Volcanoes inject aerosols into the upper atmosphere,
where they reflect sunlight and cool the Earth’s surface.
Solar Cycles
As we discussed earlier, the sun goes through cycles too,
sometimes growing hotter, sometimes colder. Today, solar
intensity is observed directly with telescopes and other
instruments. Variations in the sun’s intensity in the past
can be determined because hotter and cooler sun periods
emit different amounts of radionuclides—atoms with
unstable nuclei that undergo radioactive decay (such as
beryllium-10 and carbon-14), which are trapped in glacial
ice and can then be measured. As we mentioned earlier,
evaluation of these radionuclides in ice cores from glaciers
reveals that during the Medieval Warm Period, from approximately
a.d. 950 to 1250, the amount of solar energy
reaching Earth was relatively high, and that minimum solar
activity occurred during the 14th century, coincident
with the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Thus, it appears
that the variability of solar energy input explains a small
part of the Earth’s climatic variability. 22, 23 Since about
1880 solar input has increased about 0.5% while CO 2
has increased about 33%. Solar input in the Arctic has
closely followed annual surface temperature. Since 1960,
CO 2 increase in the atmosphere has been about 25% in
close agreement with Arctic surface temperature increase.
Thus in the past 50 years CO 2 appears to be a dominant
factor in increasing surface temperature in the Arctic as
well as the entire Earth. 24 That is recent warming cannot
be explained by solar activity.
FIGURE 20.18 The Earth wobbles, changes its tilt, and has an
elliptical orbit that changes as well. (Source: Skinner, Porter, and
Botkin, The Blue Planet [John Wiley], 2nd edition, p. 335.)
Atmospheric Transparency Affects
Climate and Weather
How transparent the atmosphere is to the radiation coming
to it, from both the sun and Earth’s surface, affects the
temperature of the Earth. Dust and aerosols absorb light,
cooling the Earth’s surfaces. Volcanoes and large forest