TITLE:
Earth-Moon Barycentre Excursions and Anomalous Quaternary Sea Level Highstands
AUTHORS:
Joaquin Meco, Consuelo Sendino, Alejandro Lomoschitz, Antonio Núñez, María José Huertas, Juan F. Betancort
KEYWORDS:
Earth-Moon Barycentre, Lunar Declination, Sea-Level, Canary Islands, Neogene, Quaternary
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.13 No.8,
August
22,
2022
ABSTRACT: Plate tectonics is driven by Earth-Moon
barycentre shifts in the lower mantle. The
eastern Canary Islands have geographic and geological conditions derived from
the movements of the Central American plates. Some features of these islands
are influenced by the rotation of the Earth from west to east in the evolution
of the marine currents that surround them and the opening of the North Atlantic to the North Pole with little
dependence of the glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). In addition, their
position with respect to the Tropic of Cancer and the African continent affect
the north-south and east-west climatic
change dynamics and their tectonic stability respectively. Dated lavas
contain marine and aeolian deposits and some of the Pleistocene marine deposits
indicate higher sea level in cooler circumstances, which is anomalous. Relating
those marine deposits produced during the warmest interglacial, the last
interglacial and the Holocene with their equivalents in the Southern
Hemisphere, they reflect shifts in the barycentre. Thanks to Holocene
radiocarbon, topographic and day length data and alkenone temperature, we
describe a mechanism by which the oscillation of the Moon’s inclination (and
declination) reaches extreme values (14º and 34º; about 4.9º more than current values) approximately every 1450 years. These values occur when there is a harmonic distortion
in surface areas of the Earth’s crust as response associated with oscillations
in the displacements of the barycentre of the Earth-Moon system. As the declination influences the movement of oceanic
waters, there is also a relationship with the Bond Events of the North
Atlantic, of unknown cause until now.