Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Moving Poles (and some theory)

The frigid polar region corresponding to the Earth's Arctic Circle (that area which receives at least one 24 hour day of full darkness) is about 4,000 kilometres across. This zone shifts constantly at about 100 km per year, meaning that over an average person's life-time (say 70 years), the climate can shift from polar Arctic, to sub-Arctic and into temperate zones - or almost two full climactic zones. There can be one zone-shift in as few as 40 years, or a zone could persist as long as 120 years, depending on how obliquely the zone moves over the observer.

However, it is possible (and quite likely) that the pole will transit obliquely to any one spot on the surface, and not pass directly over that spot for hundreds of years. This could mean that a particular climate could be over one spot for a considerable period of time - perhaps centuries, or that more likely, an area oscillates around 2 or 3 climates for a few centuries before being thrown into the deep freeze.

The poles oscillate (or wobble) about the surface of Angadurgh in an overlapping sinusoidal fashion, ultimately tracing the entire surface over time. The appearance of the planet from space (if sped up) would look like a spinning top as it decays - wobbling in a circular fashion with a certain pattern to its seeming chaos.

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