Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The end of the last glacial period, which was about 10,000 years ago, is often called the end of the ice age, although extensive year-round ice persists in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the past few million years, the glacial-interglacial cycles have been "paced" by periodic variations in the Earth's orbit via Milankovitch cycles.
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period ended about 15,000 years ago. [1]
A less severe cold period or ice age is shown during the Jurassic-Cretaceous (150 Ma). There have been five or six major ice ages in the history of Earth over the past 3 billion years. The Late Cenozoic Ice Age began 34 million years ago, its latest phase being the Quaternary glaciation, in progress since 2.58 million years ago.
During the Last Glacial Maximum, much of the world was cold, dry, and inhospitable, with frequent storms and a dust-laden atmosphere. The dustiness of the atmosphere is a prominent feature in ice cores; dust levels were as much as 20 to 25 times greater than they are in the present.
Great Famine of 1315–1317 in Europe; Little Ice Age: Various dates between 1250 and 1550 or later are held to mark the start of the Little ice age, ending at equally varied dates around 1850 1460–1550 Spörer Minimum cold; 1656–1715 Maunder Minimum low sunspot activity; 1790–1830 Dalton Minimum low sunspot activity, cold
Ice ages as reflected in atmospheric CO 2, stored in the bubbles from glacial ice of Antarctica During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene, numerous cold phases called glacials ( Quaternary ice age ), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years.
Violet: The extent of the Alpine ice sheet in the Würm glaciation. Blue: The extent in earlier ice ages. The Würm glaciation or Würm stage (German: Würm-Kaltzeit or Würm-Glazial, colloquially often also Würmeiszeit or Würmzeit; cf. ice age), usually referred to in the literature as the Würm [1] (often spelled "Wurm"), was the last glacial period in the Alpine region.
To geologists, an ice age is defined by the presence of large amounts of land-based ice. Prior to the Quaternary glaciation, land-based ice formed during at least four earlier geologic periods: the late Paleozoic (360–260 Ma), Andean-Saharan (450–420 Ma), Cryogenian (720–635 Ma) and Huronian (2,400–2,100 Ma). [5] [6]