Earth's solar system position plays a major role in climate change

There's no doubt that humans have influenced the world's climate to at least some degree since we have been around, but how much of the now changing climate is our fault?

A new study has been released in the PNAS journal by scientists who have examined the global climate and carbon cycle that occurred millions of years ago. The scientists from Trinity College Dublin looked ancient mudstone deposits in Wales and discovered that the position of Earth's orbit played a major role in carbon-cycle and global climate as a whole throughout the Triassic-Jurassic Mass Extinction period around 201 million years ago.

The scientists found that volcanic activity in these periods of time played a big role in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that were present in both the ocean and atmosphere. This discovery revealed that both the global climate and carbon cycles were constantly changing. Dr. Micha Ruhl, Assistant Professor in Sedimentology at Trinity, said, "Periodic changes in the shape of Earth's orbit around the sun impacted on the amount of energy received by Earth from the sun, which in turn impacted climatic and environmental processes, as well as the carbon-cycle, on local, regional and global scales."

"Although this phenomenon is well known for having caused the glacial cycles in more recent times, the present study shows that these external forcing mechanisms on Earth's systems were also operating, and controlling Earth's carbon cycle in the distant past, even during non-glacial times when Earth was marked by hot-house climate conditions."

If you are interested in checking out more of this study, click this link here.