Articles | Volume 16, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1989-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1989-2025
Research article
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05 Nov 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 05 Nov 2025

Milankovitch theory “as an initial value problem”: Implications of the long memory of ice advection

Mikhail Y. Verbitsky and Dmitry Volobuev

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Cited articles

Abe-Ouchi, A., Saito, F., Kawamura, K., Raymo, M. E., Okuno, J. I., Takahashi, K., and Blatter, H.: Insolation-driven 100,000-year glacial cycles and hysteresis of ice-sheet volume, Nature, 500, 190–194, 2013. 
Bahr, D. B., Pfeffer, W. T., and Kaser, G.: A review of volume-area scaling of glaciers, Rev. Geophys., 53, 95–140, https://doi.org/10.1002/2014RG000470, 2015. 
Barenblatt, G. I.: Scaling, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 0 521 53394 5, 2003. 
Berger, W. H.: On the Milankovitch sensitivity of the Quaternary deep-sea record, Clim. Past, 9, 2003–2011, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-2003-2013, 2013. 
Buckingham, E.: On physically similar systems; illustrations of the use of dimensional equations, Phys. Rev., 4, 345–376, 1914.  
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Broadly, there are two schools of thought with regards to the relationship between orbital cycles and Ice Ages: either the orbital cycles directly force the Ice Ages or the Ice Ages are an oscillation within the climate system that is phase-locked to the orbital cycles. Both of these schools of thought implicitly assume that the orbital forcing makes the climate system "forget" its initial state. Here, Verbitsky & Volobuev perform idealized ice-sheet simulations and show that the system doesn't "forget" its initial state. Furthermore, this system exhibits spontaneous periodicity changes. The authors argue that this behaviour depends on the memory duration of the climate system. Therefore, this work opens an important avenue to be addressed by future research, focusing on the length of the memory of the climate system.
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We describe a so far unrecognized physical phenomenon of orbital forcing modifying the terrestrial physics in such a way that instead of erasing the memory of initial conditions this memory is extended and initial values become major governing parameters.
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