In terms of the ebb and flow of the Earth’s climate over the course of its history, the next ice age is starting to look overdue. Periods between recent ice ages, or ‘interglacials’, average out to be around 11 thousand years, and it’s currently been 11, 600 since the last multi-millennial winter. Although it is almost impossible to predict exactly when the next ice age will occur (if it will at all), it is clear that a global freeze is not on the horizon; the amount of CO2 emitted by human activity and the enhanced greenhouse effect that results all but preclude it. But what if we weren’t around and CO2 was lower?
In a paper published in Nature Geoscience this week, new research proposes that the next ice age would have been kick-started sometime in the next thousand years, just round the corner in the context of the Earth’s lifespan, if CO2 was sufficiently low.
Image: Deep into the Patagonia Glacier Credit: Trey Ratcliff from Flickr
Reproduced courtesy University of Cambridge Office of Communications