The ice ages keep a beat set by Earth's orbit. Three slow astronomical cycles combine into the summer sunlight that grows and melts the great ice sheets.
Milankovitch CyclesLive
orbital forcing of the ice ages
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Three slow changes in Earth's orbit — the stretch of its ellipse (eccentricity), the tilt of its axis (obliquity), and the wobble of that axis (precession) — combine to modulate summer sunlight at high latitudes. That insolation rhythm paces the glacial-interglacial cycles recorded in ice and ocean cores.
Reading this result: With obliquity weighted highest, a ~41 kyr beat dominates — the pattern that paced glacial cycles before ~1 million years ago, when axial tilt led the forcing.
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How it works
Milankovitch cycles are three periodic changes in Earth's orbit and spin: eccentricity (~100,000 years), axial tilt or obliquity (~41,000 years), and precession (~23,000 years). Their combination modulates high-latitude summer insolation, which paces the glacial-interglacial cycles seen in ice cores and deep-sea sediments.
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