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Quaternary climatic fluctuations as a consequence of self-organized criticality

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  • Grieger, B

Abstract

It has long been known that the earth has gone through several colder climatic periods — the so-called ice ages — during the late Quaternary. In spite of various hypothesis about the cause of the growth and decay of the ice sheets, there is still no quantitative explanation for the full range of climatic variation. In this paper it is demonstrated that the concept of self-organized criticality due to Bak et al. (1987, 1988) offers a simple and appealing possibility to explain the power law background spectrum of the Quaternary ice volume fluctuations. We present a simple cellular automation which is able to reproduce almost the whole spectrum of Quaternary glaciation variability. The surprising confirmity of the very coarse model and the data suggests that the continental ice sheets — like the model — are in the self-organized critical state. This is confirmed by results obtained with a global ice model.

Suggested Citation

  • Grieger, B, 1992. "Quaternary climatic fluctuations as a consequence of self-organized criticality," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 191(1), pages 51-56.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:191:y:1992:i:1:p:51-56
    DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(92)90505-K
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