Researchers from Louisiana State University have discovered a connection between the Earth’s tilt and the movement of a low pressure band of clouds that is the Earth’s largest source of heat and moisture which is commonly known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ. The earth’s obliquity is known to shift every 41,000 years and its correlation with the ITCZ apparently causes extreme weather events. This finding showed that the Earth’s tilt plays a much larger part in ITCZ migration than previously thought, which, the study said, would enable climate scientists to better predict such extreme weather events. Researchers derived this finding by analyzing data from the past 282,000 years.
According to history, the collapse of the Mayan civilisation and several Chinese dynasties are linked to persistent droughts associated with the ITCZ. Therefore this new information is critical to understanding global climate and sustainable human socioeconomic development. The research, which was published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’, looks at the possibility of predicting extreme weather events that have the potential to wipe out entire civilizations from around the world.
Kristine DeLong, associate professor at Louisiana State University in the U.S. said, I took the data and put it through a mathematical prism so I could look at the patterns and that is where we see the obliquity cycle, that 41,000-year cycle. With research collaborators at the University of Science and Technology of China and National Taiwan University, DeLong also looked at sediment cores from off the coast of Papua New Guinea and stalactite samples from ancient caves in China. All these observations, coupled with historical data have led to the discovery of the aforementioned link between the earth’s obliquity and extreme climate change.