Observe changes in Earth's orbit that contribute to climate change

Type of Resource: Link

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Description

This animated visualization of precession, eccentricity, and obliquity is simple and straightforward and provides text explanations. It is a good starting place to show Milankovitch cycles.

Kepler’s laws describe common features of the motions of orbiting objects, including their elliptical paths around the sun. Orbits may change due to the gravitational effects from, or collisions with, other objects in the solar system.

Cyclical changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit around the sun, together with changes in the tilt of the planet’s axis of rotation, both occurring over hundreds of thousands of years, have altered the intensity and distribution of sunlight falling on the earth. These phenomena cause a cycle of ice ages and other gradual climate changes.

The solar system consists of the sun and a collection of objects, including planets, their moons, and asteroids that are held in orbit around the sun by its gravitational pull on them.

This model of the solar system can explain eclipses of the sun and the moon. Earth’s spin axis is fixed in direction over the short-term but tilted relative to its orbit around the sun. The seasons are a result of that tilt and are caused by the differential intensity of sunlight on different areas of Earth across the year.

Empirical evidence is required to differentiate between cause and correlation and make claims about specific causes and effects.

Much of science deals with constructing explanations of how things change and how they remain stable.

Cause and effect relationships can be suggested and predicted for complex natural and human designed systems by examining what is known about smaller scale mechanisms within the system.

Feedback (negative or positive) can stabilize or destabilize a system.

Cause and effect relationships may be used to predict phenomena in natural or designed systems.

Empirical evidence is needed to identify patterns.

Change and rates of change can be quantified and modeled over very short or very long periods of time. Some system changes are irreversible.

Graphs, charts, and images can be used to identify patterns in data.

Stability might be disturbed either by sudden events or gradual changes that accumulate over time.

Patterns can be used to identify cause-and-effect relationships.

Explanations of stability and change in natural or designed systems can be constructed by examining the changes over time and processes at different scales, including the atomic scale.

Small changes in one part of a system might cause large changes in another part.

Changes in systems may have various causes that may not have equal effects.

Systems in dynamic equilibrium are stable due to a balance of feedback mechanisms.