Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. Pre-publication typescript headed 'Manuscript accepted for publication in Science (as submitted Oct. 12, 1976)'

HAYS, James D., IMBRIE, John, & SHACKLETON, Nicholas J.

Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science, [Washington, D.C., 1976

About this Item

A LANDMARK PAPER IN CLIMATE SCIENCE . Extremely rare pre-publication typescript of one of the most important papers in climate science, the definitive proof of Milankovi?'s theory of ice ages, that they result from variations in the precession, eccentricity, and obliquity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This copy is heavily annotated on the title page by the celebrated American palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science writer Steven Jay Gould. Milankovi? calculated the effects of the variation in the Earth's orbit on the incoming solar radiation in the Northern Hemisphere. He concluded that Earth's orbit changes in three cycles of different lengths and theorized that there were variations of more than twenty percent in the amount of sunshine reaching the northern latitudes. In his 1941 account, Canon of Insolation and the Ice Age Problem, he suggested that this caused the waxing and waning of the great continental ice sheets. Using ocean sediment cores, Shackleton, Hays and Imbrie demonstrated in the present paper that oscillations in climate over the past few million years could be correlated with variations in the orbital and positional relationship between the Earth and the Sun, as predicted by Milankovi? "Shackleton's work contributed to the first global compilation of climate data, CLIMAP1, in 1976 . He [of Cambridge University], John Imbrie of Brown University and Jim Hays of the Lamont Doherty Geophysics Observatory, showed that there was a strong signal in the ocean oxygen isotope record from the volume changes associated with ice ages. There were cyclic changes in the signals that took place over familiar periods of 23000 and 41000 years, timescales familiar from theoretical work in the 1930s by the Serbian climatologist Milutin Milankovitch. These and the 100,000-year cycle were identified with ice ages by Milankovitch, on the basis of on solar insolation theory, changes in the radiation reaching Earth from the Sun as a result of regular changes in the precession, obliquity and eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. Shackleton, Imbrie and Hays's confirmation of the Milankovitch cycles in the ice age record was a key finding: changes in our climate are induced by processes outside the Earth itself. It implied that these orbital cycles could be found in a range of palaeoclimate data. How and why the Earth's orbital changes affect the climate remained - and remain - difficult questions, but the very existence of such cycles in the recent rock record sparked new interest. When researchers looked for these periodicities, in tree ring records or annual sediment layers in glacial lakes, they found them. Palaeoclimatology was born" ('Ice Ages,' Geoscientist 17, 1 January 2007). This article was subsequently published inScience, Vol. 194, No. 4270, 10 December 1976, pp. 1121-1132. No other copy of this pre-publication document located. Provenance: Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), American palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science writer. Not signed by him but bearing his filing mark (which matches his usage elsewhere) in addition to his extensive annotations to the first page, under the strident heading 'My approach', and with four numbered sections, concluding 'Funny / what looks good in direction, / a major problem / in magnitude / (my point).' Gould's interest stems from his attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of evolution over shorter 'ecological' time periods, 'normal geological time', and in periods of mass extinction (this is Gould's 'three tier' system; see his classic 'The paradox of the first tier', 1985). Although he had previously acknowledged the role of Milankovi? Cycles in climate change, the evidence of his later work - and also his annotations here - is that he was unconvinced that the right level of precision had been reached, especially in measuring absolute temperatures. Gould apparently never published his response, so the annotations here are a unique record of his thinking. Ea.

Seller Inventory # 6419

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. Pre-publication typescript headed 'Manuscript accepted for publication in Science (as submitted Oct. 12, 1976)'
• Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science, [Washington, D.C.
• Publication Date: 1976
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First edition.
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Classical Physics, Mechanics, Optics