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Highlight 1: Earth’s axial precession frequency, 0-650 million years ago (Project 1)

From Wu et al. (2024): Tidal friction between the Earth and Moon dissipates energy, slowing Earth’s rotation while accelerating the Moon and moving it away from the Earth. The decreasing rotation rate and increasing lunar distance reduce the torque exerted by the Sun and Moon on Earth’s equatorial bulge, and thereby Earth’s axial precession frequency k. Cyclostratigraphy can be used to estimate k, hence Earth-Moon distance and Earth rotation rate. Reconstructed k from 0-650 Ma with TimeOptB (Malinverno and Meyers, 2024) shows a decreasing trend over 0-650 Ma (Fig. 1). Fluctuations in k over some intervals are in close agreement with the F2022 model (Farhat et al., 2022), e.g., 400 Ma to 300 Ma, but elsewhere are strongly divergent, e.g., 600 Ma to 500 Ma. The “stasis” in k from 500 Ma to 350 Ma is most likely the result of attenuated tidal dissipation (Huang et al., 2024).

Fig. 1: Reconstructed Earth axial precession frequency k from application of TimeOptB (Malinverno and Meyers, 2024) on 34 cyclostratigraphic datasets, 0-650 million years ago. Red-filled and pink-filled circles are posterior estimates of k the datasets. The red-filled circles and error bars indicate cyclostratigraphy with especially well-developed obliquity and/or climatic precession cycles. Error bars and shading ranges are ±2σ. F2022=Farhat et al. (2022). Y axis decreases upward. (Adapted from Figure 1 of Wu et al., 2024.)

References:

Farhat, M., Auclair‐Desrotour, P., Boué, G., Laskar, J., 2022, The resonant tidal evolution of the Earth‐Moon distance. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 665, L1, https://doi.org/10.1051/0004‐6361/202243445

Huang, H., Ma, C., Laskar, J., Sinnesael, M., Farhat , M., Hoang, N.H., Yuan Gao, Y., Zeeden, C., Zhong, H., Hou, M., Wang, C., 2024, Geological evidence reveals a staircase pattern in Earth’s rotational deceleration evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(33), e2317051121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2317051121

Malinverno, A., Meyers, S.R., 2024, Bayesian Estimation of Past Astronomical Frequencies, Lunar Distance, and Length of Day From Sediment Cycles, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 25, e2023GC011176, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GC011176

Wu, Y., Malinverno, A., Meyers, S.R., Hinnov, L.A. (2024), A 650-Myr history of Earth’s axial precession frequency and the evolution of the Earth-Moon system derived from cyclostratigraphy, Science Advances, 10(42), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ado2412

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