Questions tagged [ice-age]
Questions related to ice ages, including causes, conditions, and evidence.
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Were sub-sea river channels formed when the land was above sea level?
In this satellite pic, on the land is the Columbia river on the western side of North America.
I was amazed to see the channel within the sea, more than 125 km long.
Can it be concluded, based on ...
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How saline were the earth's oceans during the Last Glacial Maximum?
According to Wikipedia sea water is 34.7 parts per thousand salt.
Between evaporation and precipitation it seems like this amount is kept largely in equilibrium but, during the last glacial maximum, a ...
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Why were the Interglacial periods in the early Pleistocene spaced about one million years apart, but recent ones only 100,000 years apart?
The Teglen (or Tiglian) interglacial period began after approximately half a million years into the Pleistocene, and the next interglacial (Waalian) occurred about a million years after that.
But the ...
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Why was the ice age more severe in North America than in Eurasia?
I've been looking at reconstructions of the extent of ice at the last glacial maximum, while each map differs slightly (two shown below), most show a massive North American ice sheet, extending as far ...
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After global warming, does an ice age occur because the polar caps have melted and caused more water to absorb the gloabl warming
Is there a le Chatilier principle within Earth - Earth heats up causes global warming resulting in polar ice melt resulting in higher sea levels which takes up the extra earth temp and the over ...
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Was there a period of global warming before the start of the last ice age?
I am curious to know if there was a period of global warming that took place before the start of the last ice age and I would like to know how long this period of global warming lasted.
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Was Zealandia above water during the last Ice age?
Was Zealandia above sea level during the last ice age? Like how Sahul or Sundaland were?
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Last ice age: did glaciers move South or move downhill?
(Note: this is from U.S. point of view)
I keep hearing how the glaciers "moved South" during the last ice age. But I thought glaciers moved downhill.
I can see that the glaciers formed ...
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Climate change: Human vs Natural [duplicate]
The planet has been warming for thousands of years. Human activity has accelerated the warming, but by how much? At some point in the future, without human intervention, the climate will have ...
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Are Ice Ages Affected by the Freezing Out of CO2 in Antarctica?
The freezing point of carbon dioxide is -78.5 $\small\mathsf{^o}$C. Occasionally this low is exceeded in Antarctica, and small quantities of CO2 are frozen out, but are returned soon after to the ...
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History of the Arctic Ocean
Much of the Arctic Ocean is fairly shallow compared to other oceans. There must have been times in the past during severe ice ages that a lot of what is now the ocean bed was above sea level. When was ...
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Migration Routes for Animals from Asia to America [closed]
The jaguar is a close relative of the Asiatic leopard and must have had a common ancestor within the last 5 million years. The South American tapir is obviously closely related to the Malayan tapir ...
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With so many positive feedbacks accelerating global warming, how did the earth ever re-enter ice ages after it came out of one?
We hear a lot about positive feedbacks when it comes to global warming. For example: ice reflects solar radiation, so as the ice melts more solar radiation is absorbed which accelerates warming; ...
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How is climate change today different than the climate change that ended the ice age(s)?
Someone I know posted a question about climate change that I do not know how to answer. While I do believe (for lack of better word) in climate change, I do not know how to answer this persons ...
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How much did temperature vary during the Ice Age?
This article,
Old Cold: Living in Ice Age America
claims the average Earth temperature during the Ice Age was 12 degrees colder than today. Is this true? How much did temperature vary during the Ice ...
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Glacial extent variability during last glacial period?
Does anyone know an online source to illustrate glacial extent variability during last ice age, ca 120 ka BP to 10 ka BP? Most sources seem to concentrate only on the maximum, but apparently, there ...
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What's the largest known range of natural temperature variations of human inhabited Earth across history?
I was reading about the ice age when temperature dropped 11 celsius degrees in relation with our current temperature. Then I found another article which says the temperature fluctuated 15 degree ...
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How big of an event is needed to trigger a long winter?
Could a small meteor or natural nuclear explosion melt an ice cap on Earth to trigger a mini ice age without the event being observed by people?
Can the Earth have an overlaying thermal cycle that ...
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Are we going to enter a mini ice age by 2030?
According to this article, a mini ice age could hit Earth by 2030
Mini Ice Age could hit Earth by 2030
and according to this video
NASA admits mini ice age coming faster than anticipated.
...
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What would happen to the Earth if there were no seasons?
If the Earth was in a fixed equinox state, what would the equilibrium temperature be at each pole? Assume daily cycle and convection and so on operate as usual, just that it's permanent sunset at both ...
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How old are Chile's fjords?
Do we have any knowledge about the age of Chile's fjords, more specifically, those found near the Northern Patagonian Ice Field?
Is it reasonable to conclude that they were formed in Quaternary given ...
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What would it be like to live in an ice age?
If you were born in the most recent ice age, how different would your life be compared to how you live it today? Furthermore, if humans currently lived in an ice age, how would it affect life today?
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Did the formation of Panama trigger the beginning of Ice Ages?
I have been studying ocean currents and associated energy flows in the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic oceans. I also looked at El Nino cycles.
I also noted when the large glacial periods ...
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Beringia - history of the region, periods of sea level fall/rise - paleogeography of Pleistocene
I am trying to find any published (not wiki) source of information about how many times and when exactly the Bering Land Mass was free of water. Everything that I find is just pieces of information in ...
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Current temperature increase VS decrease during the little ice age
Looking at the following temperature reconstructions i have two questions (source: wikipedia):
Why is the y-axis centered around -0.2 °C?
Why are the consequences of the current temperature ...
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Reults of the glacials and interglacials of the ice age on the soil
I have read that the Earth has undergone five ice ages, the latest one is the Quaternary glaciation. I know that in the ice age there are glacial periods and interglacial periods, and we are currently ...
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Ice Age/Interglacial Period Cycle
What happens if an Ice Age or Interglacial Period Cycle starts? I don't know what exactly what happened then.
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What caused the earth's climate to stabilise ~10 thousand years ago?
We can see that the last glacial period ended 12-10K years ago. Interestingly enough, this also appears to coincide with the rise of large human civilisations.
My question is: What caused the earth'...
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Next Ice age may be unavoidable
During the warm period before the most recent ice age, 120,000 years ago, roughly half of the Greenland ice sheet melted.This is thought to have been the cause of the last ice age.
Question: If this ...
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Altering the Milankovitch Cycles [closed]
As I understand it, the Pleistocene ice ages were dictated by three major factors suggested by the Serbian geophysicist Milutin Milankovitch--eccentricity (orbital shape), obliquity (axial tilt) and ...
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What's a frost-gley?
I've noticed this term in a book about Pleistocene East Europe. It's apparently a soil which was formed during the interstadials, but that's all my book says, and I can't find much more on the ...
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When will glaciation resume? Has global warming delayed return to global cooling?
As far as I understand, we are currently living in the Holocene, an interglacial period of the Quaternary glaciation, i.e. the current ice age that has so far lasted 2.6 million years. The Holocene ...
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For what percentage of the earth's history has there been permanent ice?
Wikipedia comments here that "Permanent ice is actually a rare phenomenon in the history of the Earth, occurring only during the 20% of the time that the planet is under an icehouse effect." A "...
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Will the Mini Ice Age solve our Global Warming Heat problem
There is news on the web saying that there will be Mini Ice Age in couple of decades.
The question is: Will this Mini Ice Age take away all the excessive heat and prevent Global Warming?
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Siberia (Beringia) during last glacier period
Today, Northern Russia is considered quite cold. It is not populated because it has low biological productivity: low light and cold. It can be below -50 at winter and 10 C at summer peak. It is low ...
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How much does ocean cover percentage change between glacial periods? [duplicate]
Currently, oceans cover about 71% of the total area of Earth. Ice ages can cause this figure to fluctuate, by lowering the sea level and creating land bridges and other features.
How much can this ...
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During the "Ice Ages" or "Snowball Earth" times, where was all the energy?
We often seem to accept the idea that there were periods of time in which the entire surface of Earth was frozen, for the most part. This implies that there were periods of time in which the entire ...
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Are ice-ages dependent on an un-equal distribution of land-masses?
Having read this answer about the precession of the equinoxes and how it affects Earth's climate, my understanding was that only because of the differing affect of continental and maritime insolation ...
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Why does Mars' experience an 'ice age' at high axis obliquity, when Earth experiences an ice age at low axis obliquity
This paper here goes into some detail about how Mars' experiences its own form of 'ice ages' on a quasi periodic basis driven by the wobbling of its axis. The main mechanism outlined is that the ...
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Circum polar regions in Interglacial periods
Is it true, that circumpolar regions around North pole, were not submerged in water and had a habitable genial climate, until the last Iceage, or glacial period?
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Carbon Dioxide levels appear to be linked to the Milankovitch cycles according to Ice Core data but what is the mechanism?
As in ice core data shows that $CO_2 $ levels have fluctuated on levels correlating to the temperature and ice levels, but I couldn't think of a mechanism for what might be the link between the ...
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Why are some theories as to the cause of glacation less popular among the scientific community?
There are a few theories as to the causes of glaciation.
There's the Milankovitch Theory, which says that there are cyclical changes in Earth's orbit and in the tilt of Earth's axis that occur over ...
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What caused the Younger Dryas cold event?
During the termination of the latest ice age the warming climate leading from glacial to interglacial conditions was abruptly reverted by a distinct but short (about 1300 years in duration) cold event,...
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How do we know that we are NOT in an "Ice Age?"
Historically, the earth has had five "Ice Ages" Each of them lasted millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of years.
The last ice age reportedly ended perhaps 10,000 years ago. That ...
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