Analysis of a Precambrian resonance-stabilized day length
- Creators
- Bartlett, Benjamin C.
- Stevenson, David J.
Abstract
During the Precambrian era, Earth's decelerating rotation would have passed a 21 h period that would have been resonant with the semidiurnal atmospheric thermal tide. Near this point, the atmospheric torque would have been maximized, being comparable in magnitude but opposite in direction to the lunar torque, halting Earth's rotational deceleration, maintaining a constant day length, as detailed by Zahnle and Walker (1987). We develop a computational model to determine necessary conditions for formation and breakage of this resonant effect. Our simulations show the resonance to be resilient to atmospheric thermal noise but suggest a sudden atmospheric temperature increase like the deglaciation period following a possible "snowball Earth" near the end of the Precambrian would break this resonance; the Marinoan and Sturtian glaciations seem the most likely candidates for this event. Our model provides a simulated day length over time that resembles existing paleorotational data, though further data are needed to verify this hypothesis.
Additional Information
© 2016 American Geophysical Union. Received 30 MAR 2016; Accepted 10 MAY 2016; Accepted article online 16 MAY 2016; Published online 15 JUN 2016; Corrected 12 JUL 2016. The authors wish to thank the late Tom Tombrello for several contributions to this paper. We also thank two reviewers for their constructive feedback. All of the code used in this paper is available in an open-source repository at github.com/bencbartlett/lengthofday or upon request from the first author.Attached Files
Published - Bartlett_et_al-2016-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Submitted - 1502.01421v2.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 62331
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151123-112131576
- Created
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2015-11-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences