As a result, less snow and ice accumulates on the ground surface. Moreover, the warmer summers produced by the larger tilt provide additional energy to melt and evaporate the snow that fell and accumulated during the winter months. In conclusion, glaciers in the polar regions should be generally receding, with other contributing factors constant, during this part of the obliquity cycle. Computer models and historical evidence suggest that the Milankovitch cycles exert their greatest cooling and warming influence when the troughs and peaks of all three cycles coincide with each other. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Variations Studies of long term climate change have discovered a connection between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and mean global temperature.
Carbon dioxide is one of the more important gases responsible for the greenhouse effect .
Certain atmospheric gases, like carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane , are able to alter the energy balance of the Earth by being able to absorb longwave radiation emitted from the Earth's surface. The net result of this process and the re-emission of longwave back to the Earth's surface increases the quantity of heat energy in the Earth's climatic system. Without the greenhouse effect, the average global temperature of the Earth would be a cold -18 degrees Celsius rather than the present 15 degrees Celsius. Other subsequent studies have confirmed these findings and have discovered that these temperature variations were closely correlated to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and variations in solar radiation received by the planet as controlled by the Milankovitch cycles. It was also theorized that the oceans were a major store of carbon dioxide and that they controlled the movement of this gas to and from the atmosphere.