Obliquity-oblateness feedback: Are climatically sensitive values of obliquity dynamically unstable?

A new model is presented for feedback between rotational and climatic variations, operative on time scales of 10⁴-10⁷ years. Due to the combined effect of planetary perturbations to the Earth's orbit plane and luni-solar torques on the oblate figure of the Earth, the obliquity varies by ∼1° on a 4·10⁴ year time scale. Associated changes in the seasonal and latitudinal pattern of incident solar radiation cause major glaciations. Mass transport from the oceans to the polar ice sheets during these glaciations can change the gravitational oblateness of the Earth by amounts approaching 1%. As the rate of spin axis precession is directly proportional to the oblateness, the climatically forced mass transport can by dynamically significant. A simple parameterization of us coupled orbital-rotational-climatic system suggests that there is a strong tendency for the system to evolve away from climatically sensitive values of the obliquity. This may explain the mid-Pleistocene transition from an obliquity dominated regime to the present regime in which most climatic variability is concentrated at longer (10⁵ year) periods.