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 ...
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
Feb 03, 2012 |
4.1 / 5 (7) |
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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
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (12) |
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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
Jan 30, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (7) |
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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
Jan 16, 2012 |
3.6 / 5 (13) |
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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 Earths orientation relative to its orbit influence the growth and decline of ice sheets was only recently tested.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jan 11, 2012 |
5 / 5 (7) |
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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
Dec 20, 2011 |
3.5 / 5 (8) |
5
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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
Dec 02, 2011 |
4.4 / 5 (8) |
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
Nov 23, 2011 |
4.7 / 5 (3) |
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
Nov 20, 2011 |
3.6 / 5 (11) |
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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
Nov 17, 2011 |
4 / 5 (1) |
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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?
Nov 04, 2011 |
4.5 / 5 (4) |
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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 ...
Nov 02, 2011 |
4 / 5 (5) |
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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
Oct 20, 2011 |
4.3 / 5 (7) |
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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 ...
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.