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News tagged with ice age

New Zealand team finds early plant arrivers dominated landscape

(PhysOrg.com) -- It seems intuitive that not all plant species could have taken a foothold on land at the same time all those millions of years ago as conditions on Earth evolved to the point where they could survive; some ...

Biology / Ecology

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast report

Sediments from the Enol lake reveal more than 13,500 years of environmental history

A team of Spanish researchers have used different geological samples, extracted from the Enol lake in Asturias, to show that the Holocene, a period that started 11,600 years ago, did not have a climate as ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 03, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 1

First plants caused ice ages: research

New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published today (February 1, 2012) in Nature Geoscience.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (12) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

New study may answer questions about enigmatic Little Ice Age

A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth's Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 30, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Archaeologists find clues to Neanderthal extinction

(PhysOrg.com) -- Computational modeling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights into the extinction of ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Jan 16, 2012 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (13) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

Of orbits and ice ages: Researcher confirms that axis shifts help to propel temperature changes

Though it was first suggested well over a century ago, the hypothesis that changes in Earth’s orientation relative to its orbit influence the growth and decline of ice sheets was only recently tested.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 11, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

In hot water: Ice Age findings forecast problems

(PhysOrg.com) -- The first comprehensive study of changes in the oxygenation of oceans at the end of the last Ice Age (between about 10 to 20,000 years ago) has implications for the future of our oceans under global warming. ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Dec 20, 2011 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (8) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Simultaneous ice melt in Antarctic and Arctic

The end of the last ice age and the processes that led to the melting of the northern and southern ice sheets supply basic information on changes in our climate. Although the maximum size of the ice sheet in the northern ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Dec 02, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (8) | comments 4

Interactive map of sea level changes launched

A new interactive map that allows users to explore changes in sea level worldwide over five decades has been launched by the UK's Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL).

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Nov 23, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 1

Carbon cycling was much smaller during last ice age than in today's climate: study

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and the increase of its abundance in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is the main cause of future global warming. In past ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Nov 20, 2011 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (11) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Archeologists investigate Ice Age hominins' adaptability to climate change

Computational modeling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights into the extinction of ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Nov 17, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Unravelling the causes of the Ice Age megafauna extinctions

Was it humans or climate change that caused the extinctions of the iconic Ice Age mammals (megafauna) such as the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth?

Biology / Ecology

created Nov 04, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Humans and climate contributed to extinctions of large ice-age mammals, study finds

the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison, and musk ox -- is the subject of a study by an international group of scientists investigating how climate fluctuations and human activity ...

Biology / Ecology

created Nov 02, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 7 | with audio podcast

Hunters present in North America 800 years earlier than previously thought: DNA analysis

The tip of a bone point fragment found embedded in a mastodon rib from an archaeological site in Washington state shows that hunters were present in North America at least 800 years before Clovis, confirming ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Oct 20, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Research team suggests European Little Ice Age came about due to reforestation in New World

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team comprised of geological and environmental science researchers from Stanford University has been studying the impact that early European exploration had on the New World and have found evidence that ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Oct 17, 2011 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (13) | comments 19 | with audio podcast report

Ice age

The general term "ice age" or, more precisely, "glacial age" denotes a geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in an expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of extra cold climate are termed "glaciations". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).

More colloquially, when speaking of the last few thousand years, "the" ice age refers to the most recent colder period (or freezing period) with extensive ice sheets over the North American and Eurasian continents: in this sense, the most recent ice age peaked, in its Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. This article will use the term ice age in the former, glaciological, sense: glacials for colder periods during ice ages and interglacials for the warmer periods.

For more information about Ice age, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Related topics: climate change