Earth's Climate Change: The Ice Age

It removes the time needed for adaptation and causes a great loss of life in the process. Globally, millions due to the direct and indirect influences of the little ice age. Every major death event and war during this period from the black plague to Napoleon’s failed campaign into Russia, the French revolution, and the Irish potato famine are tied to the little ice age. The little ice age was preceded by a warmer wetter period that allowed people to become reliant on certain crops and weather patterns for their survival. Several events occurred within a short period of time to start this cooling period that lasted 500 years. The warm period called the medieval maximum actually set events in motion. It is hypothesized that this warm period melted global ice packs, introducing a large volume of fresh water into the ocean interrupting the thermohaline flow. This stopped warm water from reaching the northern climates and therefore the atmosphere grew colder because of this. The second circumstance was the Maunder Minimum. This is a period of dormancy for sunspots. This results in less radiation reaching earth and less warmth available. The third event was actually a series of events. Volcanic eruptions started with a regularity of five major eruptions every century. This put a large amount of ash and water vapor into the atmosphere which in turn reflected the sunlight, deepening the cooling

The green garbage truck pulled up into a long winding ramp like driveway, the special clamps on his wheels dug into the ice that encased the world in a snowy ice age. At five in the morning this house seemed eerily silent, even for five A.M. The truck driver sighed. He felt sorry for this family. In fact, he’d been briefed on them this morning at his office on the 61st floor of The World Building. Mr. Abdallah had been fired yesterday, from his job as a government official on the 98th floor. His income had gone down drastically, and the garbage man, lowly as he was had heard that it was unlikely Mr. Abdallah would ever be hired again. With a heavy heart the young man got out of his truck hooked up the garbage can, flipped it into the trucked and returned it.

Why should we care is a question that many people end up asking. Earth’s average temperature has increased by at least 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century and scientists expect it to go up to about 12 degrees Fahrenheit in the next. To us, those numbers seem quite small, but the average temperature a couple centuries ago was 4 degrees lower than it is today, allowing ice caps to stay ice caps. As the temperature increases, ice caps start to melt resulting in the rising of sea levels. With the sea rising, storms are becoming more and more frequent and stronger. High sea levels also cause torrential rains and flooding which threatens us as humans, wildlife and nature.

Throughout the Pleistocene ice ages, large areas of the earth were covered by vast ice sheets. Global sea levels dropped up to 120 metres below present-day coastlines, exposing large areas of land that were once flooded by shallow seas. These lands became colonised by vegetation, animals, birds and insects over time. During the Ice Age, the island continent to the south-east of Asia comprised New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania as a single land mass. Separating this continent from Asia was a narrow sea about one hundred kilometres wide, over which the first ocean crossings were made sometime before 60,000 years ago.

“The Glacier, and with it the Duck, might have moved since then.” Lou Sapienza is the lead organizer of a Coast Guard Operation searching for a missing World War II plane; the Grumman Duck and its lost crew. A challenging problem the party has with finding the Duck is the movement of glaciers since the planes went down close to 70 years ago. Since the 1950s the extent and the movement of the ice sheets have rapidly changed due to Global Warming. Most affected by this climate change is The Arctic, Antarctica and the Greenland Ice Cap. Lou Sapienza and his team of specialists only have a hand-drawn map of where the Duck crashed and an old radar survey from years ago. Their daring task is to predict how the movement of the ice sheet accelerated by global warming might have moved their missing plane. Since global warming is a problem, everyone will be affected by it in one way or another. It is time to act, to confront the problem and find a solution.

According to (Wikipedia 2015) The Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that occurred from about 1350 Ad to 1850 AD. When the little ice age actually started it debated by many climatologist and historians claiming it starting from anywhere between the 13th and 16th century and ending between the 18th and 19th century. However NASA has defined The Little Ice Age as a cold period between AD 1550 and AD 1850, in which there was 3 particularly cold periods in this time. The timing of The Little Ice age is not the only uncertainty as the areas affected by the global cooling is also widely debated. Though it generally agreed that Europe and North America experienced cooling from the little ice age as they were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20th century (H.H. Lamb et. Al from Environmental History Resources n.d). Another uncertainity of the The Little Ice age is what exactly caused the the Little Ice age. Three of the most likley and well-known caused are solar acivity, volcanic erruptions and thermoaline circulation.

The statement regarding the Little Ice Age (LIA) and its relation to modern warming is incorrect at multiple points and contains poor logical reasoning in arriving at its conclusions.

According to a study performed by the University of Northumbria (https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/) of the United Kingdom, Earth’s northern hemisphere should be experiencing a mini ice age in the next 15 years. However, new research shows that this may not be the case after all. This could just be a case of confusing causation with correlation, but that doesn’t forgive the phenomenal ‘news’ being released without confirmation and having the claim be refuted mere days later.

Due to recent increases in the Earths average temperature Climate Change has become a highly discussed topic in society. This has caused individuals to solely focus on the increasing temperatures of today and completely neglect temperatures that the planet has experienced in the past. When looking at paleoclimate data one can clearly see the fluxuations in the ice age cycles (periods of cooling and warming). Ice age cycles are amplified by positive feedback systems that make the earth cooler or warmer depending upon the physical process that is being altered. In his response Bruce Parker, a physical oceanographer, discussed the impact that these positive feedback loops have on Earths overall temperature and how scientists have yet to figure out what causes the amplifying mechanisms to switch from warming to cooling.

Did you know that during the ice agea the CO2 levels on earth were around 200 ppm and hovered to 280 ppm during the warmer periods? Last 2013 it surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history and is currently at 403.93 ppm as of October 2016. Because of this increase there are several environmental changes that people experience such as higher sea levels. Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters in the last century. The next effect is higher global temperature. Last year it was the first time that the global average temperature was higher than the average during 1880-1899.The increased temperature also lead to warmer oceans, shrinking ice sheets and Arctic sea ice, glacial retreat , decreased snow cover ,and extreme events. It

A few centuries ago there was a Mini ice age dubbed little ice age. Some believed major contributors-large volcanic eruption and ‘lower solar output’(less solar activity). Solar activity has been rapidly decreasing (2009 lowest in a century). More CO2, less insulation needed to drop. 2009 is the lowest solar activity level in over 100 years. It would take 2.6 million years for the world to enter an interglacial period and to reach a glacial trigger. The glaciation trigger is the required drop in summer insulation.

Natural climate change has influenced the Earth’s weather systems for over millions of years (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2016). This notion has been verified by studies which reveal that climate change has brought upon several, unprecedented alterations to the Earth’s landscape ever since the Earth came into existence (Hoffman, 2009). The commencing of the Ice Age, a period of time during which the planet’s surface was shrouded in ice, is commonly cited as evidence to ratify the claim made in the preceding sentence (Weart & American Institute of Physics, 2016).

There is significant evidence from studies based on climate archives that the Earth’s climate about 10 000 years ago was very different from the present climate; it has changed a lot since the last glacial period which ended about 10 000- 12 000 years ago (Chappell, 1998). Hence, about 10 000 years ago the Earth was buried under ice sheets and it was much cooler than present temperatures (see Figure 1, Appendix) (Chappell, 1998). The Earth that has been cycling between cold and warm climates for ages and is currently in the interglacial period where it has slowly become warmer along with a rise in sea level (Watts, 2009).

The mini ice age, or Little Ice Age (LIA), was a period of time characterized by a decrease in temperatures worldwide. Although there are no definite times for the start and end of the Little Ice Age, it is generally accepted that it occurred from approximately 1300 CE to 1850 CE. The coldest stage of this time lasted from around 1645 to 1715. Also, the expansion of mountain glaciers in several locations was a distinctive feature of the Little Ice Age. The event had various effects and its origins are disputable.

Published in the Fourth Assessment, Working Group I identified notable understanding of noticeable human-induced climate change and current Greenhouse Gas data. One of the most notable points from this publication was the changes in temperature and sea level from 1961 to 1990. As seen in the figure below (Changes, 2007), surface temperature is rising, average sea level is rising, and snow cover over the Northern Hemisphere is dropping. When comparing the data with previous centuries using the Paleoclimatic Perspective, it is noted that this change is rather unusual and has not been observed to have occurred previously.