Ice age

This article is about glacial periods in general. For specific recent glacial periods often referred to as the "Ice Age", see Last Glacial Period, Pleistocene, and Quaternary glaciation. For the current ice age, see Late Cenozoic Ice Age. For other uses, see Ice Age.

An ice age is a term describing two distinct but related long periods of time when the reduction in the temperature of 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 icehouse and greenhouse periods based on whether there are glaciers on the planet or not. Earth is currently in an icehouse period called Quaternary glaciation.[1] Individual pulses of cold climate within an icehouse period are termed glacial periods (glacials, glaciations, glacial stages, stadials, stades, or colloquially, ice ages), and intermittent warm periods within an icehouse period are called interglacials or interstadials.[2] Both icehouse and glacial periods are commonly referred as ice age.

In glaciology, the term ice age is defined by the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.[3] By this definition, the current Holocene epoch is an interglacial period of an ice age. The accumulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is projected to delay the next glacial period.[4][5][6]

  1. ^ Ehlers, Jürgen; Gibbard, Philip (2011). "Quaternary Glaciation". Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. pp. 873–882. doi:10.1007/978-90-481-2642-2_423. ISBN 978-90-481-2641-5.
  2. ^ Cohen, K .M.; Finney, S. C.; Gibbard, P. L.; Fan, J.-X. "International Chronostratigraphic Chart 2013" (PDF). stratigraphy.org. ICS. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 July 2013. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  3. ^ Imbrie, J.; Imbrie, K. P. (1979). Ice ages: solving the mystery. Short Hills NJ: Enslow Publishers. ISBN 978-0-89490-015-0.
  4. ^ Thomson, Andrea (2007). "Global Warming Good News: No More Ice Ages". LiveScience. Archived from the original on 2020-11-12. Retrieved 2019-01-07.
  5. ^ "Human-made climate change suppresses the next ice age". Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. 2016. Archived from the original on 2020-08-18. Retrieved 2019-01-07.
  6. ^ Archer, David; Ganopolski, Andrey (May 2005). "A movable trigger: Fossil fuel CO2 and the onset of the next glaciation". Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. 6 (5). Bibcode:2005GGG.....6.5003A. doi:10.1029/2004GC000891. S2CID 18549459.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.