Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon explains to us why the Moon would exert an influence on the climate, minimal certainly, but which would affect global warming.
franceinfo: An English team has just come to a surprising conclusion: the Moon would have an influence on global warming?
Mathilde Fontez: This result is really a surprise. So, it should be noted that it has not yet been published in due form, so you have to be careful. Even if it is already considered as a neat work by the specialists who have studied it. And the effect he finds is really small. But yes, what meteorologist Ed Hawkins and his team are showing is that the lunar cycle has an effect on the Earth’s average surface temperatures.
A cooling or warming effect?
The two ! It depends on the phase of the cycle. What the researchers looked at was the 18-year lunar cycle, which takes into account the Moon’s position relative to Earth and the Sun. Every 18 years and 10 days, when these stars are closest, and the Moon crosses the Earth-Sun plane, its influence reaches its maximum.
The effect of this cycle had never really been modeled. That’s what the researchers did. And they find that it tends to half cool temperatures and half raise them. Morality, this cycle does not have a long-term effect, but it has a local impact, on the scale of the decade. For us, researchers have calculated that the Moon is cooling right now, and will have a warming effect in the 2030s.
This effect will be felt?
That’s the whole question. By itself, the effect is extremely weak. Researchers estimate it at 0.04°C. Suffice to say that it is imperceptible. But for Ed Hawkins, the phenomenon should still be included in the models.
Currently, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change created in 1988) predicts that the world will exceed 1.5°C of warming between 2028 and 2033 – 1.5°C, we recall, is the threshold that the signatory countries of the Paris agreement have agreed not to exceed. Except that taking into account the effect of the Moon, the window could be reduced: the switch would take place between 2029 and 2032.
How does the Moon have such power over the Earth’s climate?
Via the tides… Their intensity modifies the mixing that they operate between the warmer waters at the surface of the ocean, and the colder deep waters. And it changes the rate at which the oceans can absorb heat. It’s a very small effect, a little tricky. But it could work.