The Effect of Milankovitch Variations in Insolation on Equatorial Seasonality
Abstract
Although the sun crosses the equator 2 times per year at the equinoxes, at times in the past the equatorial insolation has had only one maximum and one minimum throughout the seasonal cycle because of Milankovitch orbital variations. Here a state-of-the-art coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model is used to study the effect of such insolation forcing on equatorial surface properties, including air and sea temperature, salinity, winds, and currents. It is shown that the equatorial seasonality is altered according to the insolation with, for example, either maximum sea surface temperature (SST) close to the vernal equinox and minimum SST close to the autumnal equinox or vice versa. The results may have important implications for understanding tropical climate as well as for the interpretation of proxy data collected from equatorial regions.
Additional Information
© 2010 American Meteorological Society. Received: March 1, 2010; Accepted: July 26, 2010. We thank the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation for its financial support. Author IE is funded by a Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship through Caltech's Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences and a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship administered by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research; ET is funded by the NSF P2C2 program through Grant ATM-0902844.Attached Files
Published - Ashkenazy2010p12464J_Climate.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 21928
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110131-084720321
- United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF)
- Caltech Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship
- NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship
- ATM-0902844
- NSF P2C2
- Created
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2011-01-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field