The science of climatology is well founded in astronomy. To the right are illustrations and presentations that reside in the overlap between these fields.
Below is a graph showing Earth's orbit parameters, incident solar radiation at a few latitudes, levels of the greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4, and temperatures relative to a 1970-2000 baseline. Click the range bars (in white) on the timeline or drag the sliders to examine time periods.Click any graph to bring it to the front. Hover over a data point to read its value. Click a vertical scale marker (when displayed) to pin it; click again to remove it. (See bottom of page for revision notes.
Orbital Viewer Interactive illustration about long-term changes to Earth's orbit. This illustration complemenets the graphs shown below.
Earth, Orbit, and Climate A presentation on the astronomical foundation to climatology. Refer to the presentatoin for more information about the orbital cycles illustrated below.
Revision 3/12/2011: Added x-y markers for any data point. Click a datapoint to display the marker; click again to hide it. You can use these markers to compare y-axis values of data that do not fit within a field of view. E.g., you can zoom in on Holocene (past 10kyr) values while having a y-value of an Eemian (115-125kya) datapoint displayed. In case the new version has bugs, the previous version is still available here: climate_old
Revision 2/17/11: Horizontal markers indicating the vertical axis values can be pinned: Mouse over a scale marker to show the horizontal bar, then click the bar or the label. It's a little finicky, but if you click the numerical value displayed on the scale, it's bar displays on and off.
Revision 1/21/11: The graphs can be displayed right to left (palaeoclimate standard) or left to right (common expectation). I added the Law Dome CO2 values up to 1950.
Revision 12/29/10: Extended range of viewer to 740 kya to show show full extend of EPICA temperatures. Orbital parameters go back to 500 kya (and will be extended soon).
Revision 12/22/10: Added Deuterium measurements from GISP2 (Greenland) and EPICA (Antarctica). Values shown are ratios of deuterium to hydrogen that reflect temperature changes.
Revisions: 12/20/10 (version 2, beta): Added labels (right), scale indicators (left) and a tool for adjusting the y-scale scale and offset. NOTE: the scale indicators overlap, so use check boxes in the graph labels to show or hide a scale. To scale a graph, select it first (click it's label) and then click the triangle in the orange bar at the bottom of the graph. Warning: if you scale one graph, others using the same unit do NOT get scaled. E.g, if you want to rescale all insolation graphs, you would have to scale each individually.
Revisions: 12/11/10: added mean annual insolation to examine whether total solar energy intercepted by Earth changes over the span of this graph.
Pending revisions: add labels and clean up formating of datapoint information; fixing the false line drawn from the origin to the first plotted point; add adjustable scaling of y axis; allow juxtapositioning of data from different timespans;
Revisions under consideration: provide a view of global energy budget affected by levels or greenhouse gases and albedo ("under consideration" is a euphanism for "still figuring out how").
