What is it about?
Astronomically forced climate change is recorded in the Earth’s cyclic sedimentary record (“cyclostratigraphy”). These records can inform on past dynamics of the Solar system and Earth rotation. Here, we reconstruct the evolution of Earth’s rotational deceleration during the Paleozoic Era based on new analysis of selected high quality cyclostratigraphy datasets. A staircase pattern in deceleration from 650 to 280 Mya is identified and attributed to the occurrence of tidal dissipation resonance. Modeling indicates that the development of major glaciations during the Paleozoic had a negligible impact on Earth’s rotation.
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Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We have tested the physical tidal models and reconstructed the evolution history of Earth-Moon system. Moreover, our work has pointed out that there is a potential connection between changes in length of day and the evolution of ocean circulation and marine ecosystems.
Perspectives
Actually, writing this article was a great challenge for me. Thanks to the help from Jacques Laskar group (Jacques, Farhat, Matthias and Nam) at Observatoire de Paris , I can succesfully finish this work.
He Huang
Chengdu University of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Geological evidence reveals a staircase pattern in Earth’s rotational deceleration evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2317051121.
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