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News tagged with ice age

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 ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Feb 20, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (39) | comments 31

Carbon cycling was much smaller during last ice age than in today's climate: study

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and the increase of its abundance in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is the main cause of future global warming. In past ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Nov 20, 2011 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (11) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Climate played big role in Vikings' disappearance from Greenland

The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony's demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created May 30, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (7) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Study debunks theory on end of 'Snowball Earth' ice age

A team of scientists led by researchers from Caltech report in this week's issue of the journal Nature that the rocks on which much of a theory on how the "Snowball Earth" ice age ended was based were formed ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 25, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 25 | with audio podcast

Glaciers melting faster than originally thought: study

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists from Aberystwyth University, the University of Exeter and Stockholm University, led by Welsh scientist and Professor Neil Glasser, have released at study published in ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 04, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (17) | comments 20 | with audio podcast report

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

created Sep 15, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (55) | comments 576 | with audio podcast report

New theory of why midcontinent faults produce earthquakes

A new theory developed at Purdue University may solve the mystery of why the New Madrid fault, which lies in the middle of the continent and not along a tectonic plate boundary, produces large earthquakes such as the ones ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jul 30, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

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

created Jul 08, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (17) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

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

created May 27, 2010 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (31) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

Deepest core drilled from Antarctic Peninsula; may contain glacial stage ice

Researchers here are hopeful that the new core they drilled through an ice field on the Antarctic Peninsula will contain ice dating back into the last ice age. If so, that record should give new insight into ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 12, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (6) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

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

created Mar 26, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (18) | comments 27 | with audio podcast

Cave reveals Southwest's abrupt climate swings during Ice Age

Ice Age climate records from an Arizona stalagmite link the Southwest's winter precipitation to temperatures in the North Atlantic, according to new research.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 20, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (14) | comments 28 | with audio podcast

Underground gases tell the story of ice ages -- and America's split jet stream

(PhysOrg.com) -- Deep underground aquifers in the American Southwest contain gases that tell of the region's ancient climate, and support a growing consensus that the jet stream over North America was once ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 12, 2010 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

'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

created Dec 02, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (19) | comments 0 weblog

Supervolcano eruption -- in Sumatra -- deforested India 73,000 years ago

A new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Nov 23, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (17) | comments 3

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.