It’s high tide for ice age climate change

Earth’s climate veers between warm and cool roughly every 1,500 years. Many scientists have thought that sunspots choreograph these fluctuations, but new research puts the spotlight on the moon.

A few years ago geochemist Charles D. Keeling and geophysicist Timothy P. Whorf, both of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., suggested that Earth’s climate doesn’t swing with sunspot rhythms but instead syncopates to the beat of the tides.