Ice age

An ice age is a long period of reduction in the

temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere,
resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and
polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate
alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods,
during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is
currently in the Quaternary glaciation, known in popular
terminology as the Ice Age.[1] Individual pulses of cold
climate within an ice age are termed "glacial periods"
(or, alternatively, "glacials", "glaciations", "glacial
stages", "stadials", "stades", or colloquially, "ice ages"),
and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are
called "interglacials" or "interstadials", with both
climatic pulses part of the Quaternary or other periods
in Earth's history.[2]

In the terminology of glaciology, ice age implies the

An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial
presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and
maximum.
southern hemispheres.[3] By this definition, we are in an
interglacial period—the Holocene. The amount of heat-
trapping gases emitted into Earth's oceans and
atmosphere is predicted to prevent the next glacial period, which otherwise would begin in around 50,000
years, and likely more glacial cycles.[4][5]

Contents
History of research
Evidence
Major ice ages
Glacials and interglacials
Feedback processes
Positive
Negative
Causes
Changes in Earth's atmosphere
Human-induced changes
Position of the continents
Fluctuations in ocean currents
Uplift of the Tibetan plateau
Variations in Earth's orbit
Variations in the Sun's energy output
Volcanism
Recent glacial and interglacial phases
Glacial stages in North America
Last Glacial Period in the semiarid Andes around Aconcagua and Tupungato
Effects of glaciation
See also
References
External links

History of research
In 1742, Pierre Martel (1706–1767), an engineer and geographer living in Geneva, visited the valley of
Chamonix in the Alps of Savoy.[6][7] Two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported
that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of erratic boulders to the glaciers, saying that they
had once extended much farther.[8][9] Later similar explanations were reported from other regions of the
Alps. In 1815 the carpenter and chamois hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin (1767–1858) explained erratic
boulders in the Val de Bagnes in the Swiss canton of Valais as being due to glaciers previously extending
further.[10] An unknown woodcutter from Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland advocated a similar idea in a
discussion with the Swiss-German geologist Jean de Charpentier (1786–1855) in 1834.[11] Comparable
explanations are also known from the Val de Ferret in the Valais and the Seeland in western Switzerland[12]
and in Goethe's scientific work.[13] Such explanations could also be found in other parts of the world. When
the Bavarian naturalist Ernst von Bibra (1806–1878) visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850, the natives
attributed fossil moraines to the former action of glaciers.[14]

Meanwhile, European scholars had begun to wonder what had caused the dispersal of erratic material. From
the middle of the 18th century, some discussed ice as a means of transport. The Swedish mining expert
Daniel Tilas (1712–1772) was, in 1742, the first person to suggest drifting sea ice in order to explain the
presence of erratic boulders in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions.[15] In 1795, the Scottish philosopher and
gentleman naturalist, James Hutton (1726–1797), explained erratic boulders in the Alps by the action of
glaciers.[16] Two decades later, in 1818, the Swedish botanist Göran Wahlenberg (1780–1851) published his
theory of a glaciation of the Scandinavian peninsula. He regarded glaciation as a regional phenomenon.[17]

Only a few years later, the Danish-Norwegian geologist Jens Esmark (1762–1839) argued a sequence of
worldwide ice ages. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those
glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in Earth's orbit.[18] During the
following years, Esmark's ideas were discussed and taken over in parts by Swedish, Scottish and German
scientists. At the University of Edinburgh Robert Jameson (1774–1854) seemed to be relatively open to
Esmark's ideas, as reviewed by Norwegian professor of glaciology Bjørn G. Andersen (1992).[19] Jameson's
remarks about ancient glaciers in Scotland were most probably prompted by Esmark.[20] In Germany,
Albrecht Reinhard Bernhardi (1797–1849), a geologist and professor of forestry at an academy in
Dreissigacker, since incorporated in the southern Thuringian city of Meiningen, adopted Esmark's theory. In
a paper published in 1832, Bernhardi speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the temperate
zones of the globe.[21]

In 1829, independently of these debates, the Swiss civil engineer Ignaz Venetz (1788–1859) explained the
dispersal of erratic boulders in the Alps, the nearby Jura Mountains, and the North German Plain as being
due to huge glaciers. When he read his paper before the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, most
scientists remained sceptical.[22] Finally, Venetz convinced his friend Jean de Charpentier. De Charpentier
transformed Venetz's idea into a theory with a glaciation limited to the Alps. His thoughts resembled
Wahlenberg's theory. In fact, both men shared the same volcanistic, or in de Charpentier's case rather
plutonistic assumptions, about the Earth's history. In 1834, de Charpentier presented his paper before the
Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft.[23] In the meantime, the German botanist Karl Friedrich
Schimper (1803–1867) was studying mosses which were growing on erratic boulders in the alpine upland of
Bavaria. He began to wonder where such masses of stone had come from. During the summer of 1835 he
made some excursions to the Bavarian Alps. Schimper came to the conclusion that ice must have been the
means of transport for the boulders in the alpine upland. In the winter of 1835 to 1836 he held some lectures
in Munich. Schimper then assumed that there must have been global times of obliteration
("Verödungszeiten") with a cold climate and frozen water.[24] Schimper spent the summer months of 1836 at
Devens, near Bex, in the Swiss Alps with his former university friend Louis Agassiz (1801–1873) and Jean
de Charpentier. Schimper, de Charpentier and possibly Venetz convinced Agassiz that there had been a time
of glaciation. During the winter of 1836/37, Agassiz and Schimper developed the theory of a sequence of
glaciations. They mainly drew upon the preceding works of Venetz, de Charpentier and on their own
fieldwork. Agassiz appears to have been already familiar with Bernhardi's paper at that time.[25] At the
beginning of 1837, Schimper coined the term "ice age" ("Eiszeit") for the period of the glaciers.[26] In July
1837 Agassiz presented their synthesis before the annual meeting of the Schweizerische Naturforschende
Gesellschaft at Neuchâtel. The audience was very critical and some opposed to the new theory because it
contradicted the established opinions on climatic history. Most contemporary scientists thought that the
Earth had been gradually cooling down since its birth as a molten globe.[27]

In order to overcome this rejection, Agassiz embarked on geological fieldwork. He published his book Study
on Glaciers ("Études sur les glaciers") in 1840.[28] De Charpentier was put out by this, as he had also been
preparing a book about the glaciation of the Alps. De Charpentier felt that Agassiz should have given him
precedence as it was he who had introduced Agassiz to in-depth glacial research.[29] Besides that, Agassiz
had, as a result of personal quarrels, omitted any mention of Schimper in his book.[30]

All together, it took several decades until the ice age theory was fully accepted by scientists. This happened
on an international scale in the second half of the 1870s following the work of James Croll, including the
publication of Climate and Time, in Their Geological Relations in 1875, which provided a credible
explanation for the causes of ice ages.[31]

Evidence
There are three main types of evidence for ice ages: geological, chemical, and paleontological.

Geological evidence for ice ages comes in various forms, including rock scouring and scratching, glacial
moraines, drumlins, valley cutting, and the deposition of till or tillites and glacial erratics. Successive
glaciations tend to distort and erase the geological evidence, making it difficult to interpret. Furthermore,
this evidence was difficult to date exactly; early theories assumed that the glacials were short compared to
the long interglacials. The advent of sediment and ice cores revealed the true situation: glacials are long,
interglacials short. It took some time for the current theory to be worked out.

The chemical evidence mainly consists of variations in the ratios of isotopes in fossils present in sediments
and sedimentary rocks and ocean sediment cores. For the most recent glacial periods ice cores provide
climate proxies from their ice, and atmospheric samples from included bubbles of air. Because water
containing heavier isotopes has a higher heat of evaporation, its proportion decreases with colder
conditions.[32] This allows a temperature record to be constructed. This evidence can be confounded,
however, by other factors recorded by isotope ratios.

The paleontological evidence consists of changes in the geographical distribution of fossils. During a
glacial period cold-adapted organisms spread into lower latitudes, and organisms that prefer warmer
conditions become extinct or are squeezed into lower latitudes. This evidence is also difficult to interpret
because it requires (1) sequences of sediments covering a long period of time, over a wide range of latitudes
and which are easily correlated; (2) ancient organisms which survive for several million years without
change and whose temperature preferences are easily diagnosed; and (3) the finding of the relevant fossils.

Despite the difficulties, analysis of ice core and ocean sediment cores[33] has shown periods of glacials and
interglacials over the past few million years. These also confirm the linkage between ice ages and
continental crust phenomena such as glacial moraines, drumlins, and glacial erratics. Hence the continental
crust phenomena are accepted as good evidence of earlier ice ages when they are found in layers created
much earlier than the time range for which ice cores and ocean sediment cores are available.

Major ice ages

Timeline of glaciations, shown in blue.

There have been at least five major ice ages in the Earth's history (the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-
Saharan, late Paleozoic, and the latest Quaternary Ice Age). Outside these ages, the Earth seems to have
been ice free even in high latitudes;[34][35] such periods are known as greenhouse periods.[36]

Rocks from the earliest well established ice age, called the Huronian,
formed around 2.4 to 2.1 Ga (billion years) ago during the early
Proterozoic Eon. Several hundreds of km of the Huronian
Supergroup are exposed 10–100 km north of the north shore of Lake
Huron extending from near Sault Ste. Marie to Sudbury, northeast of
Lake Huron, with giant layers of now-lithified till beds, dropstones,
varves, outwash, and scoured basement rocks. Correlative Huronian
deposits have been found near Marquette, Michigan, and correlation
has been made with Paleoproterozoic glacial deposits from Western
Australia. The Huronian ice age was caused by the elimination of
atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas, during the Great
Ice age map of northern Germany
Oxygenation Event.[37]
and its northern neighbours. Red:
maximum limit of Weichselian glacial;
The next well-documented ice age, and probably the most severe of
yellow: Saale glacial at maximum
the last billion years, occurred from 720 to 630 million years ago
(Drenthe stage); blue: Elster glacial
(the Cryogenian period) and may have produced a Snowball Earth in
maximum glaciation.
which glacial ice sheets reached the equator,[38] possibly being
ended by the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as CO2
produced by volcanoes. "The presence of ice on the continents and pack ice on the oceans would inhibit
both silicate weathering and photosynthesis, which are the two major sinks for CO2 at present."[39] It has
been suggested that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian
explosion, though this model is recent and controversial.

The Andean-Saharan occurred from 460 to 420 million years ago, during the Late Ordovician and the
Silurian period.

The evolution of land plants at the onset of the Devonian period caused a long term increase in planetary
oxygen levels and reduction of CO2 levels, which resulted in the late Paleozoic icehouse. Its former name,
the Karoo glaciation, was named after the glacial tills found in the Karoo region of South Africa. There were
extensive polar ice caps at intervals from 360 to 260 million years ago in South Africa during the
Carboniferous and early Permian Periods. Correlatives
are known from Argentina, also in the center of the
ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland.

The Quaternary Glaciation / Quaternary Ice Age started

about 2.58 million years ago at the beginning of the
Quaternary Period when the spread of ice sheets in the
Sediment records showing the fluctuating
Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has
sequences of glacials and interglacials during the
seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and
last several million years.
retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales
called glacial periods, glacials or glacial advances, and
interglacial periods, interglacials or glacial retreats. The
earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that
remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as
on Baffin Island.

The definition of the Quaternary as beginning 2.58 Ma is based on the formation of the Arctic ice cap. The
Antarctic ice sheet began to form earlier, at about 34 Ma, in the mid-Cenozoic (Eocene-Oligocene
Boundary). The term Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this early phase.[40]

Ice ages can be further divided by location and time; for example, the names Riss (180,000–130,000 years
bp) and Würm (70,000–10,000 years bp) refer specifically to glaciation in the Alpine region. The maximum
extent of the ice is not maintained for the full interval. The scouring action of each glaciation tends to
remove most of the evidence of prior ice sheets almost completely, except in regions where the later sheet
does not achieve full coverage.

Glacials and interglacials

Within the ice ages (or at least within the current one),
more temperate and more severe periods occur. The
colder periods are called glacial periods, the warmer
periods interglacials, such as the Eemian Stage.

Glacials are characterized by cooler and drier climates

over most of the earth and large land and sea ice masses
extending outward from the poles. Mountain glaciers in
otherwise unglaciated areas extend to lower elevations
due to a lower snow line. Sea levels drop due to the
removal of large volumes of water above sea level in the
icecaps. There is evidence that ocean circulation Shows the pattern of temperature and ice volume
patterns are disrupted by glaciations. Since the earth has changes associated with recent glacials and
significant continental glaciation in the Arctic and interglacials
Antarctic, we are currently in a glacial minimum of a
glaciation. Such a period between glacial maxima is
known as an interglacial. The glacials and interglacials also coincided with changes in Earth's orbit called
Milankovitch cycles.

The earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for around 11,700 years,[41] and an
article in Nature in 2004 argues that it might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000
years.[42] Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next glacial period would begin at least
50,000 years from now, due to the Milankovitch cycles. Moreover,
Minimum and maximum glaciation
anthropogenic forcing from increased greenhouse gases is
estimated to potentially outweigh the orbital forcing of the
Milankovitch cycles for hundreds of thousand of years.[43][5][4]

Feedback processes
Each glacial period is subject to positive feedback which makes it
more severe, and negative feedback which mitigates and (in all
cases so far) eventually ends it.

Positive
Minimum (interglacial, black) and
Ice and snow increase Earth's albedo, i.e. they make it reflect more maximum (glacial, grey) glaciation of
of the sun's energy and absorb less. Hence, when the air the northern hemisphere
temperature decreases, ice and snow fields grow, and this
continues until competition with a negative feedback mechanism
forces the system to an equilibrium. Also, the reduction in forests
caused by the ice's expansion increases albedo.

Another theory proposed by Ewing and Donn in 1956[44]

hypothesized that an ice-free Arctic Ocean leads to increased
snowfall at high latitudes. When low-temperature ice covers the
Arctic Ocean there is little evaporation or sublimation and the
polar regions are quite dry in terms of precipitation, comparable to
the amount found in mid-latitude deserts. This low precipitation
allows high-latitude snowfalls to melt during the summer. An ice-
free Arctic Ocean absorbs solar radiation during the long summer
days, and evaporates more water into the Arctic atmosphere. With
higher precipitation, portions of this snow may not melt during the
summer and so glacial ice can form at lower altitudes and more
southerly latitudes, reducing the temperatures over land by
increased albedo as noted above. Furthermore, under this
hypothesis the lack of oceanic pack ice allows increased exchange
of waters between the Arctic and the North Atlantic Oceans,
warming the Arctic and cooling the North Atlantic. (Current Minimum (interglacial, black) and
projected consequences of global warming include a largely ice- maximum (glacial, grey) glaciation of
free Arctic Ocean within 5–20 years, see Arctic shrinkage.) the southern hemisphere
Additional fresh water flowing into the North Atlantic during a
warming cycle may also reduce the global ocean water circulation.
Such a reduction (by reducing the effects of the Gulf Stream) would have a cooling effect on northern
Europe, which in turn would lead to increased low-latitude snow retention during the summer. It has also
been suggested that during an extensive glacial, glaciers may move through the Gulf of Saint Lawrence,
extending into the North Atlantic Ocean far enough to block the Gulf Stream.

Negative

Ice sheets that form during glaciations cause erosion of the land beneath them. After some time, this will
reduce land above sea level and thus diminish the amount of space on which ice sheets can form. This
mitigates the albedo feedback, as does the lowering in sea level that accompanies the formation of ice
sheets.[45]

Another factor is the increased aridity occurring with glacial maxima, which reduces the precipitation
available to maintain glaciation. The glacial retreat induced by this or any other process can be amplified by
similar inverse positive feedbacks as for glacial advances.[46]

According to research published in Nature Geoscience, human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) will defer
the next ice age. Researchers used data on Earth's orbit to find the historical warm interglacial period that
looks most like the current one and from this have predicted that the next ice age would usually begin within
1,500 years. They go on to say that emissions have been so high that it will not.[47]

Causes
The causes of ice ages are not fully understood for either the large-scale ice age periods or the smaller ebb
and flow of glacial–interglacial periods within an ice age. The consensus is that several factors are
important: atmospheric composition, such as the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane (the specific
levels of the previously mentioned gases are now able to be seen with the new ice core samples from EPICA
Dome C in Antarctica over the past 800,000 years); changes in the earth's orbit around the Sun known as
Milankovitch cycles; the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of
continental and oceanic crust on the earth's surface, which affect wind and ocean currents; variations in solar
output; the orbital dynamics of the Earth–Moon system; the impact of relatively large meteorites and
volcanism including eruptions of supervolcanoes.[48]

Some of these factors influence each other. For example, changes in Earth's atmospheric composition
(especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases) may alter the climate, while climate change itself can
change the atmospheric composition (for example by changing the rate at which weathering removes CO2).

Maureen Raymo, William Ruddiman and others propose that the Tibetan and Colorado Plateaus are
immense CO2 "scrubbers" with a capacity to remove enough CO2 from the global atmosphere to be a
significant causal factor of the 40 million year Cenozoic Cooling trend. They further claim that
approximately half of their uplift (and CO2 "scrubbing" capacity) occurred in the past 10 million
years.[49][50]

Changes in Earth's atmosphere

There is evidence that greenhouse gas levels fell at the start of ice ages and rose during the retreat of the ice
sheets, but it is difficult to establish cause and effect (see the notes above on the role of weathering).
Greenhouse gas levels may also have been affected by other factors which have been proposed as causes of
ice ages, such as the movement of continents and volcanism.

The Snowball Earth hypothesis maintains that the severe freezing in the late Proterozoic was ended by an
increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, mainly from volcanoes, and some supporters of Snowball Earth
argue that it was caused in the first place by a reduction in atmospheric CO2. The hypothesis also warns of
future Snowball Earths.

In 2009, further evidence was provided that changes in solar insolation provide the initial trigger for the
earth to warm after an Ice Age, with secondary factors like increases in greenhouse gases accounting for the
magnitude of the change.[51]

Human-induced changes
There is considerable evidence that over the very recent period of the last 100–1000 years, the sharp
increases in human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has caused the parallel sharp and
accelerating increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases which trap the sun's heat. The consensus theory of the
scientific community is that the resulting greenhouse effect is a principal cause of the increase in global
warming which has occurred over the same period, and a chief contributor to the accelerated melting of the
remaining glaciers and polar ice. A 2012 investigation finds that dinosaurs released methane through
digestion in a similar amount to humanity's current methane release, which "could have been a key factor" to
the very warm climate 150 million years ago.[52]

William Ruddiman has proposed the early anthropocene hypothesis, according to which the anthropocene
era, as some people call the most recent period in the earth's history when the activities of the human species
first began to have a significant global impact on the earth's climate and ecosystems, did not begin in the
18th century with the advent of the Industrial Era, but dates back to 8,000 years ago, due to intense farming
activities of our early agrarian ancestors. It was at that time that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations
stopped following the periodic pattern of the Milankovitch cycles. In his overdue-glaciation hypothesis
Ruddiman states that an incipient glacial would probably have begun several thousand years ago, but the
arrival of that scheduled glacial was forestalled by the activities of early farmers.[53]

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (December 17, 2008), scientists detailed evidence in
support of the controversial idea that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with
extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last 1,000 years. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the
oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming,
possibly forestalling the onset of a new glacial age.[54]

Position of the continents

The geological record appears to show that ice ages start when the continents are in positions which block or
reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles and thus allow ice sheets to form. The ice
sheets increase Earth's reflectivity and thus reduce the absorption of solar radiation. With less radiation
absorbed the atmosphere cools; the cooling allows the ice sheets to grow, which further increases reflectivity
in a positive feedback loop. The ice age continues until the reduction in weathering causes an increase in the
greenhouse effect.

There are three main contributors from the layout of the continents that obstruct the movement of warm
water to the poles:[55]

A continent sits on top of a pole, as Antarctica does today.

A polar sea is almost land-locked, as the Arctic Ocean is today.
A supercontinent covers most of the equator, as Rodinia did during the Cryogenian period.

Since today's Earth has a continent over the South Pole and an almost land-locked ocean over the North
Pole, geologists believe that Earth will continue to experience glacial periods in the geologically near future.

Some scientists believe that the Himalayas are a major factor in the current ice age, because these mountains
have increased Earth's total rainfall and therefore the rate at which carbon dioxide is washed out of the
atmosphere, decreasing the greenhouse effect.[50] The Himalayas' formation started about 70 million years
ago when the Indo-Australian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate, and the Himalayas are still rising by
about 5 mm per year because the Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67 mm/year. The history of the
Himalayas broadly fits the long-term decrease in Earth's average temperature since the mid-Eocene, 40
million years ago.
Fluctuations in ocean currents

Another important contribution to ancient climate regimes is the variation of ocean currents, which are
modified by continent position, sea levels and salinity, as well as other factors. They have the ability to cool
(e.g. aiding the creation of Antarctic ice) and the ability to warm (e.g. giving the British Isles a temperate as
opposed to a boreal climate). The closing of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago may have
ushered in the present period of strong glaciation over North America by ending the exchange of water
between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.[56]

Analyses suggest that ocean current fluctuations can adequately account for recent glacial oscillations.
During the last glacial period the sea-level has fluctuated 20–30 m as water was sequestered, primarily in the
Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. When ice collected and the sea level dropped sufficiently, flow through the
Bering Strait (the narrow strait between Siberia and Alaska is about 50 m deep today) was reduced, resulting
in increased flow from the North Atlantic. This realigned the thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic,
increasing heat transport into the Arctic, which melted the polar ice accumulation and reduced other
continental ice sheets. The release of water raised sea levels again, restoring the ingress of colder water from
the Pacific with an accompanying shift to northern hemisphere ice accumulation.[57]

Uplift of the Tibetan plateau

Matthias Kuhle's geological theory of Ice Age development was suggested by the existence of an ice sheet
covering the Tibetan Plateau during the Ice Ages (Last Glacial Maximum?). According to Kuhle, the plate-
tectonic uplift of Tibet past the snow-line has led to a surface of c. 2,400,000 square kilometres (930,000 sq
mi) changing from bare land to ice with a 70% greater albedo. The reflection of energy into space resulted in
a global cooling, triggering the Pleistocene Ice Age. Because this highland is at a subtropical latitude, with 4
to 5 times the insolation of high-latitude areas, what would be Earth's strongest heating surface has turned
into a cooling surface.

Kuhle explains the interglacial periods by the 100,000-year cycle of radiation changes due to variations in
Earth's orbit. This comparatively insignificant warming, when combined with the lowering of the Nordic
inland ice areas and Tibet due to the weight of the superimposed ice-load, has led to the repeated complete
thawing of the inland ice areas.[58][59][60][61]

Variations in Earth's orbit

The Milankovitch cycles are a set of cyclic variations in characteristics of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
Each cycle has a different length, so at some times their effects reinforce each other and at other times they
(partially) cancel each other.

There is strong evidence

that the Milankovitch
cycles affect the
occurrence of glacial and
interglacial periods
within an ice age. The
present ice age is the
most studied and best Past and future of daily average insolation at top of the atmosphere on the day of the
understood, particularly summer solstice, at 65 N latitude.
the last 400,000 years,
since this is the period
covered by ice cores that record atmospheric composition and proxies for temperature and ice volume.
Within this period, the match of glacial/interglacial frequencies to the Milanković orbital forcing periods is
so close that orbital forcing is generally accepted. The combined effects of the changing distance to the Sun,
the precession of the Earth's axis, and the changing tilt of the Earth's axis redistribute the sunlight received
by the Earth. Of particular importance are changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, which affect the intensity of
seasons. For example, the amount of solar influx in July at 65 degrees north latitude varies by as much as
22% (from 450 W/m² to 550 W/m²). It is widely believed that ice sheets advance when summers become too
cool to melt all of the accumulated snowfall from the previous winter. Some believe that the strength of the
orbital forcing is too small to trigger glaciations, but feedback mechanisms like CO2 may explain this
mismatch.

While Milankovitch forcing predicts that cyclic changes in the Earth's orbital elements can be expressed in
the glaciation record, additional explanations are necessary to explain which cycles are observed to be most
important in the timing of glacial–interglacial periods. In particular, during the last 800,000 years, the
dominant period of glacial–interglacial oscillation has been 100,000 years, which corresponds to changes in
Earth's orbital eccentricity and orbital inclination. Yet this is by far the weakest of the three frequencies
predicted by Milankovitch. During the period 3.0–0.8 million years ago, the dominant pattern of glaciation
corresponded to the 41,000-year period of changes in Earth's obliquity (tilt of the axis). The reasons for
dominance of one frequency versus another are poorly understood and an active area of current research, but
the answer probably relates to some form of resonance in the Earth's climate system. Recent work suggests
that the 100K year cycle dominates due to increased southern-pole sea-ice increasing total solar
reflectivity.[62][63]

The "traditional" Milankovitch explanation struggles to explain the dominance of the 100,000-year cycle
over the last 8 cycles. Richard A. Muller, Gordon J. F. MacDonald,[64][65][66] and others have pointed out
that those calculations are for a two-dimensional orbit of Earth but the three-dimensional orbit also has a
100,000-year cycle of orbital inclination. They proposed that these variations in orbital inclination lead to
variations in insolation, as the Earth moves in and out of known dust bands in the solar system. Although
this is a different mechanism to the traditional view, the "predicted" periods over the last 400,000 years are
nearly the same. The Muller and MacDonald theory, in turn, has been challenged by Jose Antonio Rial.[67]

Another worker, William Ruddiman, has suggested a model that explains the 100,000-year cycle by the
modulating effect of eccentricity (weak 100,000-year cycle) on precession (26,000-year cycle) combined
with greenhouse gas feedbacks in the 41,000- and 26,000-year cycles. Yet another theory has been advanced
by Peter Huybers who argued that the 41,000-year cycle has always been dominant, but that the Earth has
entered a mode of climate behavior where only the second or third cycle triggers an ice age. This would
imply that the 100,000-year periodicity is really an illusion created by averaging together cycles lasting
80,000 and 120,000 years.[68] This theory is consistent with a simple empirical multi-state model proposed
by Didier Paillard.[69] Paillard suggests that the late Pleistocene glacial cycles can be seen as jumps between
three quasi-stable climate states. The jumps are induced by the orbital forcing, while in the early Pleistocene
the 41,000-year glacial cycles resulted from jumps between only two climate states. A dynamical model
explaining this behavior was proposed by Peter Ditlevsen.[70] This is in support of the suggestion that the
late Pleistocene glacial cycles are not due to the weak 100,000-year eccentricity cycle, but a non-linear
response to mainly the 41,000-year obliquity cycle.

Variations in the Sun's energy output

There are at least two types of variation in the Sun's energy output

In the very long term, astrophysicists believe that the Sun's output increases by about 7%
every one billion (109) years.
 Shorter-term variations such as sunspot cycles, and longer episodes such as the Maunder
Minimum, which occurred during the coldest part of the Little Ice Age.

The long-term increase in the Sun's output cannot be a cause of ice ages.

Volcanism

Volcanic eruptions may have contributed to the inception and/or the end of ice age periods. At times during
the paleoclimate, carbon dioxide levels were two or three times greater than today. Volcanoes and
movements in continental plates contributed to high amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide
from volcanoes probably contributed to periods with highest overall temperatures.[71] One suggested
explanation of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is that undersea volcanoes released methane from
clathrates and thus caused a large and rapid increase in the greenhouse effect.[72] There appears to be no
geological evidence for such eruptions at the right time, but this does not prove they did not happen.

Recent glacial and interglacial phases

The current geological period, the Quaternary, which began
about 2.6 million years ago and extends into the present,[2]
is marked by warm and cold episodes, cold phases called
glacials (Quaternary ice age) lasting about 100,000 years,
and which are then interrupted by the warmer interglacials
which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold
episode of the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years
ago.[73] Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the
Quaternary, called the Holocene.

Glacial stages in North America Northern hemisphere glaciation during the last
ice ages. The setup of 3 to 4 kilometer thick ice
The major glacial stages of the current ice age in North sheets caused a sea level lowering of about
America are the Illinoian, Eemian and Wisconsin 120 m.
glaciation. The use of the Nebraskan, Afton, Kansan, and
Yarmouthian stages to subdivide the ice age in North
America has been discontinued by Quaternary geologists and geomorphologists. These stages have all been
merged into the Pre-Illinoian in the 1980s.[74][75][76]

During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Last Glacial Maximum
(26,000 to 13,300 years ago), ice sheets extended to about 45th parallel north. These sheets were 3 to 4
kilometres (1.9 to 2.5 mi) thick.[75]

This Wisconsin glaciation left widespread impacts on the North American landscape. The Great Lakes and
the Finger Lakes were carved by ice deepening old valleys. Most of the lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin
were gouged out by glaciers and later filled with glacial meltwaters. The old Teays River drainage system
was radically altered and largely reshaped into the Ohio River drainage system. Other rivers were dammed
and diverted to new channels, such as Niagara Falls, which formed a dramatic waterfall and gorge, when the
waterflow encountered a limestone escarpment. Another similar waterfall, at the present Clark Reservation
State Park near Syracuse, New York, is now dry.
The area from Long Island to Nantucket, Massachusetts was formed
from glacial till, and the plethora of lakes on the Canadian Shield in
northern Canada can be almost entirely attributed to the action of the
ice. As the ice retreated and the rock dust dried, winds carried the
material hundreds of miles, forming beds of loess many dozens of
feet thick in the Missouri Valley. Post-glacial rebound continues to
reshape the Great Lakes and other areas formerly under the weight
of the ice sheets.

The Driftless Area, a portion of western and southwestern Wisconsin Stages of proglacial lake
along with parts of adjacent Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, was not development in the region of the
covered by glaciers. current North American Great Lakes.

Last Glacial Period in the semiarid Andes

around Aconcagua and Tupungato

A specially interesting climatic change during glacial times has taken place in the semi-arid Andes. Beside
the expected cooling down in comparison with the current climate, a significant precipitation change
happened here. So, researches in the presently semiarid subtropic Aconcagua-massif (6,962 m) have shown
an unexpectedly extensive glacial glaciation of the type "ice stream network".[77][78][79][80][81] The
connected valley glaciers exceeding 100 km in length, flowed down on the East-side of this section of the
Andes at 32–34°S and 69–71°W as far as a height of 2,060 m and on the western luff-side still clearly
deeper.[81][82] Where current glaciers scarcely reach 10 km in length, the snowline (ELA) runs at a height of
4,600 m and at that time was lowered to 3,200 m asl, i.e. about 1,400 m. From this follows that—beside of
an annual depression of temperature about c. 8.4 °C— here was an increase in precipitation. Accordingly, at
glacial times the humid climatic belt that today is situated several latitude degrees further to the S, was
shifted much further to the N.[80][81]

Effects of glaciation
Although the last glacial period ended more than 8,000 years ago, its
effects can still be felt today. For example, the moving ice carved out
the landscape in Canada (See Canadian Arctic Archipelago),
Greenland, northern Eurasia and Antarctica. The erratic boulders,
till, drumlins, eskers, fjords, kettle lakes, moraines, cirques, horns,
etc., are typical features left behind by the glaciers.

The weight of the ice sheets was so great that they deformed the
Earth's crust and mantle. After the ice sheets melted, the ice-covered
land rebounded. Due to the high viscosity of the Earth's mantle, the
flow of mantle rocks which controls the rebound process is very
slow—at a rate of about 1 cm/year near the center of rebound area
today.

During glaciation, water was taken from the oceans to form the ice
at high latitudes, thus global sea level dropped by about 110 meters, Scandinavia exhibits some of the
exposing the continental shelves and forming land-bridges between typical effects of ice age glaciation
land-masses for animals to migrate. During deglaciation, the melted such as fjords and lakes.
ice-water returned to the oceans, causing sea level to rise. This
process can cause sudden shifts in coastlines and hydration systems
resulting in newly submerged lands, emerging lands, collapsed ice dams resulting in salination of lakes, new
ice dams creating vast areas of freshwater, and a general alteration in regional weather patterns on a large
but temporary scale. It can even cause temporary reglaciation. This type of chaotic pattern of rapidly
changing land, ice, saltwater and freshwater has been proposed as the likely model for the Baltic and
Scandinavian regions, as well as much of central North America at the end of the last glacial maximum,
with the present-day coastlines only being achieved in the last few millennia of prehistory. Also, the effect
of elevation on Scandinavia submerged a vast continental plain that had existed under much of what is now
the North Sea, connecting the British Isles to Continental Europe.[83]

The redistribution of ice-water on the surface of the Earth and the flow of mantle rocks causes changes in
the gravitational field as well as changes to the distribution of the moment of inertia of the Earth. These
changes to the moment of inertia result in a change in the angular velocity, axis, and wobble of the Earth's
rotation.

The weight of the redistributed surface mass loaded the lithosphere, caused it to flex and also induced stress
within the Earth. The presence of the glaciers generally suppressed the movement of faults below.[84][85][86]
During deglaciation, the faults experience accelerated slip triggering earthquakes. Earthquakes triggered
near the ice margin may in turn accelerate ice calving and may account for the Heinrich events.[87] As more
ice is removed near the ice margin, more intraplate earthquakes are induced and this positive feedback may
explain the fast collapse of ice sheets.

In Europe, glacial erosion and isostatic sinking from weight of ice made the Baltic Sea, which before the Ice
Age was all land drained by the Eridanos River.

See also
Global cooling – Discredited 1970s hypothesis of imminent cooling of the Earth
International Union for Quaternary Research
Irish Sea Glacier – A huge glacier during the Pleistocene Ice Age
Late Glacial Maximum
Little Ice Age – A period of cooling after the Medieval Warm Period that lasted from the 16th to
the 19th century
Post-glacial rebound – Rise of land masses that were depressed by the huge weight of ice
sheets during the last glacial period
Timeline of glaciation – Chronology of the major ice ages of the Earth
Geologic temperature record – Changes in Earth's environment as determined from geologic
evidence on multi-million to billion year time scales

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External links
Cracking the Ice Age (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/) from PBS
Montgomery, Keith (2010). "Development of the glacial theory, 1800–1870" (http://glacialtheor
y.net). Historical Simulation
Raymo, M. (July 2011). "Overview of the Uplift-Weathering Hypothesis" (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20081022085754/http://www.moraymo.us/uplift_overview.php). Archived from the
original (http://www.moraymo.us/uplift_overview.php) on 2008-10-22.
 Eduard Y. Osipov, Oleg M. Khlystov. Glaciers and meltwater flux to Lake Baikal during the Last
Glacial Maximum. (http://ice.tsu.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blo
g&id=43&Itemid=88&limitstart=5)
Black, R. (9 January 2012). "Carbon emissions 'will defer Ice Age' " (https://www.bbc.co.uk/ne
ws/science-environment-16439807). BBC News: Science and Environment.

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