The Earth CAN regulate its temperature over thousands of years to keep the planet within a habitable range.

A new study confirms that the Earth can regulate its temperature over hundreds of thousands of years to keep it within a constant range.

The planet contains a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that is able to keep the climate pendulum from swinging too much in either direction for a long time.

This is thought to be achieved through “silicate weathering,” a geological process during which the slow, steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that draw carbon from the atmosphere to ocean sediments, thereby trapping gas in rocks.

Findings published on Wednesday in the journal Scientific achievementsare based on a study of paleoclimatic data that captures fluctuations in global mean temperatures over the past 66 million years.

A new study confirms that the Earth can regulate its temperature over hundreds of thousands of years to keep it within a constant range.

A new study confirms that the Earth can regulate its temperature over hundreds of thousands of years to keep it within a constant range.

Scientists believe that we are currently in a warming period and have urged policymakers to adopt a series of changes to limit carbon emissions or become carbon neutral.  Above: The water level in Lake Mead, Nevada, is at its lowest level since April 1937, when the reservoir first filled, according to NASA.

Scientists believe that we are currently in a warming period and have urged policymakers to adopt a series of changes to limit carbon emissions or become carbon neutral. Above: The water level in Lake Mead, Nevada, is at its lowest level since April 1937, when the reservoir first filled, according to NASA.

The researchers applied mathematical analysis to determine if the data revealed any patterns that would show stabilizing phenomena, keeping global temperatures at the same level for a very long time.

They found that there is a consistent pattern in which fluctuations in the planet’s temperature decay over hundreds of thousands of years. This duration is similar to the time scales during which silicate weathering is thought to be active.

“You have a planet whose climate has undergone so many dramatic external changes. Why has life survived all this time? One of the arguments is that we need some kind of stabilizing mechanism to keep temperatures suitable for life,” said Konstantin Arnscheidt, a PhD student in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EAPS).

“But it has never been demonstrated from the data that such a mechanism permanently controlled the Earth’s climate.”

Through previous research, scientists have monitored the movement of carbon in and out of the earth’s surface to stay relatively balanced despite global temperature fluctuations.

Scientists believe that we are currently in a warming period and have urged policymakers to adopt a series of changes to limit carbon emissions or become carbon neutral.

Arnscheidt and colleagues analyzed the 66-million-year history of global mean temperatures to look at a number of different timescales, including tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, to see if any stabilizing patterns emerged on each timescale.

“It’s sort of like your car speeding down the street, and when you hit the brake, you slide for a long time before you stop,” said Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics at MIT. statement.

“There is a time scale during which friction drag or stabilizing feedback kicks in as the system returns to a steady state.”

Although scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering could help maintain our planet’s carbon cycle, this is the first time they have observed direct evidence of this mechanism.

Arnscheidt and colleagues analyzed the 66-million-year history of global mean temperatures to look at a number of different timescales, including tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, to see if any stabilizing patterns emerged on each timescale.  Above: A view from the fishing village of Chittagong Potenga, offshore Bangladesh, where a cyclone struck on October 25, 2022.

Arnscheidt and colleagues analyzed the 66-million-year history of global mean temperatures to look at a number of different timescales, including tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, to see if any stabilizing patterns emerged on each timescale. Above: A view from the fishing village of Chittagong Potenga, offshore Bangladesh, where a cyclone struck on October 25, 2022.

“On the one hand, this is good, because we know that today's global warming will eventually be neutralized thanks to this stabilizing feedback,” Arnscheidt explained.  Above: A man cycles through the flooded Sausalito/Mill Valley bike path during

“On the one hand, this is good, because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be neutralized thanks to this stabilizing feedback,” Arnscheidt explained. Above: A man cycles through the flooded Sausalito/Mill Valley bike path during “King’s Tide” in Mill Valley, California.

“On the one hand, this is good, because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be neutralized thanks to this stabilizing feedback,” Arnscheidt explained.

“But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years, so not fast enough to solve our current problems.”

One notable finding of their work is that over much longer timescales, that is, over a million years, the data did not reveal any stabilizing feedbacks, leading to the question: what was holding back global temperatures?

“There is an idea that chance may have played an important role in determining why, more than 3 billion years later, life still exists,” Rothman suggested.

“There are two camps: some say that randomness is a good enough explanation, while others say there must be a stabilizing feedback,” said Arnscheidt.

We can show directly from the data that the answer is probably somewhere in between. In other words, there was some stabilization, but pure luck probably also played a role in making the Earth habitable.”