News tagged with ice age
Critical turning point can trigger abrupt climate change
Ice ages are the greatest natural climate changes in recent geological times. Their rise and fall are caused by slight changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun due to the influence of the other planets. But we do not know ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Apr 20, 2009 |
4.6 / 5 (58) |
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Sunspots could soon disappear for decades: study
(PhysOrg.com) -- Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Sep 15, 2010 |
4.9 / 5 (55) |
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CO2 higher today than last 2.1 million years
Researchers have reconstructed atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 2.1 million years in the sharpest detail yet, shedding new light on its role in the earth's cycles of cooling and warming.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jun 18, 2009 |
4.3 / 5 (50) |
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Russians revive Ice Age flower from frozen burrow
It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists ...
Feb 20, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (39) |
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Scientists detect huge carbon 'burp' that helped end last ice age
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have found the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide 'burp' that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 27, 2010 |
3.7 / 5 (31) |
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Marine Scientist Finds 'Little Ice Age' Had Dramatic Effect on Gulf
(PhysOrg.com) -- More than 350 years ago, the temperatures in northern Europe dropped dramatically in an event known as the “Little Ice Age.” Now - deep below the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and buried in ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Feb 22, 2010 |
4.7 / 5 (23) |
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Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages -- may also help predict future
Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years - they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 06, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (24) |
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Answer to what ended the last ice age may be blowing in the winds, paper says
Scientists still puzzle over how Earth emerged from its last ice age, an event that ushered in a warmer climate and the birth of human civilization. In the geological blink of an eye, ice sheets in the northern ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jun 25, 2010 |
4.6 / 5 (20) |
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Sea level rise of 1 meter within 100 years
New research indicates that the ocean could rise in the next 100 years to a meter higher than the current sea level - which is three times higher than predictions from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jan 08, 2009 |
3.2 / 5 (26) |
15
Gullies on Mars show tantalizing signs of recent water activity
(PhysOrg.com) -- Planetary geologists at Brown University have found a gully fan system on Mars that formed about 1.25 million years ago. The fan offers compelling evidence that it was formed by melt water ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 02, 2009 |
4.4 / 5 (19) |
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'Super-river' formed the English Channel
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Anglo-French scientists studying sedimentary deposits in the Bay of Biscay have concluded that Britain and France were separated by a "super-river" during three periods of glaciations, ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Dec 02, 2009 |
4.4 / 5 (19) |
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NASA Study Finds Atlantic 'Conveyor Belt' Not Slowing
(PhysOrg.com) -- New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Mar 26, 2010 |
4.6 / 5 (18) |
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Dramatic climate change is unpredictable
The fear that global temperature can change very quickly and cause dramatic climate changes that may have a disastrous impact on many countries and populations is great around the world. But what causes climate ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Aug 30, 2010 |
3.7 / 5 (22) |
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Volcanoes played pivotal role in ancient ice age, mass extinction
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers here have discovered the pivotal role that volcanoes played in a deadly ice age 450 million years ago.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Oct 26, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (17) |
3
The North Pacific, a global backup generator for past climate change
Toward the end of the last ice age, a major reorganization took place in the current system of the North Pacific with far-reaching implications for climate, according to a new study published in the July 9, ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jul 08, 2010 |
4.5 / 5 (17) |
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Ice age
The general term "ice age" or, more precisely, "glacial age" denotes a geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in an expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of extra cold climate are termed "glaciations". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).
More colloquially, when speaking of the last few thousand years, "the" ice age refers to the most recent colder period (or freezing period) with extensive ice sheets over the North American and Eurasian continents: in this sense, the most recent ice age peaked, in its Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. This article will use the term ice age in the former, glaciological, sense: glacials for colder periods during ice ages and interglacials for the warmer periods.
For more information about Ice age, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
