The Caterpillar Effect

The Caterpillar effect describes the way the earth’s tectonic plates move in response to long-term heating and cooling causing thermal expansion and contraction.
For the last year I’ve been publishing a series of articles examine the role of this effect in the ice-age cycle and with so many articles it is now necessary to provide an index.

Summary: The Caterpillar theory of tectonic plate movement – it’s just simple physics.

• Introduction
• Criteria for Cycles
• Temperature induced changes to earth’s crust
• Thermal crust expansion, decomposition and the Carbon cycle
• Overview of feedbacks
• Climate stability
• Hitting the buffers
• How CO2 could control climate
• Drying of climate
• 5million years of cycles
• Hadley Cells
• The Haseler Gap
• How cycles are triggered + upper threshold