Glaciers have existed on Earth for at least 60 million years, a period stretching back almost to the time of the dinosaurs. New research pushed the date when the planet was last glacier-free back to at least 26 million years.
Deep valleys buried beneath the seafloor of the North Sea record how the ancient ice sheets that used to cover Europe expelled water to stop themselves from collapsing.
About 100,000 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere climate plunged into a deep freeze that allowed massive ice sheets to form. Over a period of about 10,000 years, local mountain glaciers grew and formed large ice sheets covering much of today’s Canada, northern Europe and Siberia.
Scientists at the University of Southhampton have discovered that changes in Earth’s orbit may have allowed complex life to survive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced.
Throughout the last ice age, the climate changed repeatedly and rapidly where Greenland temperatures rose between 5 and 16 degrees Celsius in decades. The climate system changed like a series of dominos falling in succession. This is the result of a study by a group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen.
The most rapid global sea-level rise event of the last deglaciation, known as Meltwater Pulse 1A (MWP-1A), occurred roughly 14,650 years ago. There is considerable uncertainty regarding the sources of meltwater and the relationship between MWP-1A and the fast-changing climate.
Scientists have discovered that the Greenland ice sheet has melted to the ground at least once in the last million years despite CO2 levels far lower than today. This ice sheet holds enough frozen water to swamp coastal cities worldwide.
During glacial periods, the sea level falls, because large quantities of water are stored in the massive inland glaciers. Until now, however, computer models have been unable to reconcile sea-level height with the thickness of the glaciers. Using new calculations, a team of climate researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now managed to …
The melting of Antarctic icebergs could be the key to the activation of a series of mechanisms that cause the Earth to suffer prolonged periods of cooling according to Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo, a researcher at the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute (CSIC-UGR).
