Topological Climate Change

Abstract

This article presents a bifurcation analysis of a simple Energy Balance Model (EBM) of the Earth’s climate, which suggests that topological change has occurred in the paleoclimate history of the Earth. In the theory of dynamical systems, two systems that are topologically equivalent have solutions with the same qualitative behavior. A change in the topological equivalence class, as parameters are varied, is called a bifurcation. Thus, a bifurcation demarcates a significant change in the behavior of the solutions of a dynamical system. If that system represents climate, then that topological change may represent an abrupt transformation of the climate, occurring even with a very small change in the forcing parameters. In this paper, the existence of a cusp bifurcation is proven in a climate EBM. The existence of this cusp bifurcation implies the co-existence of two distinct stable equilibrium climate states (bistability), as well as the existence of abrupt transitions between these two states (fold bifurcations) in the EBM. These transitions are dependent on the past history of the system (hysteresis). The two universal unfolding parameters for the cusp bifurcation have been determined as functions of the relevant physical parameters. These ideas lead to the proposal of a new explanation for the so-called warm equable climate problem of the mid-Cretaceous and early Eocene. The analysis presented here implies that the mid-Cretaceous and early Eocene climate systems are topologically equivalent to each other, but they are not topologically equivalent to the preindustrial modern climate. The transition from the warm, equable paleoclimate to today’s cooler nonequable climate occurs via fold (or saddle-node) bifurcations in the EBM, which correspond to the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) at the south pole and the Pliocene-Pleistocene Transition (PPT) at the north pole, in the paleoclimate record of Earth.