High-inclination circumplanetary orbits that are gravitationally perturbed by the central star can undergo Kozai oscillations—large-amplitude, coupled variations in the orbital eccentricity and inclination. We first study how this effect is modified by incorporating perturbations from the planetary oblateness. Tremaine et al. (2009) found that, for planets with obliquities > 68.875, orbits in t...

Mercury’s capture into the 3:2 spin-orbit resonance can be explained as a result of its chaotic orbital dynamics. One major objective of MESSENGER and BepiColombo spatial missions is to accurately measure Mercury’s rotation and its obliquity in order to obtain constraints on internal structure of the planet. Analytical approaches at the first order level using the Cassini state assumptions give...

Expressions for tidal dissipation in a body in synchronous rotation at arbitrary orbital eccentricity and obliquity are derived. The rate of tidal dissipation for a synchronously rotating body is compared to that in a body in asymptotic nonsynchronous rotation. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Planetary obliquity and eccentricity influence climate by shaping the spatial temporal patterns of stellar energy incident at a planet's surface, affecting both annual mean magnitude seasonal variability. Previous work has demonstrated importance planetary for habitability, but most studies have not explicitly modeled response life to these parameters. While exaggerated seasons may be stressful...

Five summer-monsoon proxies from the Northern Arabian Sea are combined using stacking and principal components analysis (PCA) to create two very similar multi-proxy records of summer-monsoon variability. The five individual proxies all respond to monsoon variability but are largely independent in terms of the processes that complicate their interpretation as summer-monsoon indicators (e.g. pres...