The late Quaternary glaciations as the response of a three- component feedback system to earth- orbital forcing.

Abstract

A climatic feedback system previously described, consisting of 3 prognostic nonlinear equations governing the mass of ice sheets, the mass of marine and continental marginal ice, and the mean ocean temperature is forced by a representation of the effects of external earth-orbital variations. With reasonable amplitudes for the eccentricity, obliquity, and precession forcing, the free oscillatory solutions of major period near 100kyr can be modified in a way that substantially agrees with the d18O-derived observation of ice mass evolution. An analysis of the sensitivity of these results to variations in the model parameters and to random perturbations shows that the solution is robust for small changes in all but a few of the equation coefficients.-from Authors