Natural Climate Change And The Ice Age: An Analysis

We all know that atmosphere is continually evolving. We have had ice ages and hotter periods when gators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have happened in a hundred thousand year cycles for the last 700 thousand years. There also have been time periods that seemed to have been hotter than the present in spite of CO2 levels being lower than they are currently. Overall what I am saying is that we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. Because of these evolutions there has been different effects on the earth.

In 1827 Louis Agassiz was the first to scientifically propose that the Earth had experienced a past ice age, which he said could explain previous observations that erratic blocks of alpine rocks scattered over the slopes and summits of the Alps, had been moved there by glaciers. He presented the theory that ancient glaciers had traveled throughout the entire northern hemisphere and deposited these rock formations along the way. Though many before him had theorized moving glaciers, he was the first to label this period of time as the Ice Age.

Beginning with Mark Hendrickson’s argument, he recognizes that the climate is changing. He wrote in his article “Climate Change-Hoax or Crime of the Century” that the Earth has emerged from a Little Ice Age not that long ago, and it would be worrisome if the climate around the globe was not warming

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.

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 Pleistocene often colloquially referred to as the Ice Age) is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's most recent period of repeated glaciations. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in

The concept of climate change has been around for quite a while. The earliest mention of climate change dates back to the 19th century. Swedish scientist, Svante Archenius was the first scientist to study the effect of CO2 on climate. (Rodhe et al 1997)

Anthropogenic climate change occurs due to something that is caused by humanity. One example of this is fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide is higher than in the previous centuries due to humans burning fuel like coal for energy. As with emissions of methane along with greenhouses rising those affects also add to change of climate. The second example of anthropogenic climate changes is due to agriculture. Before humans began burning fuels for energy climate change occurred by deforestation, agriculture and also irrigation. The change happened as people had reduced vegetation ground cover, which changes how sunlight may be reflected and absorbed. Natural climate change occurs due to events such as volcanoes eruption and the ash being spread everywhere. One example for natural climate change is solar energy, there are fluctuations which occur over time and predicts some pattern for change. Another example of natural climate change is from earth itself, the orbiting from the earth around the sun will alter at different positions which has an effect of what level of energy earth gets. How these changes are similar they both alter changes to the climate and create side effects which cause natural disasters and health issues for humans. How

From 2002 to 2016, the Ice Age movie franchise, produced by Blue Sky Studios, has capitalized on events during the Pleistocene Epoch period when massive warming occurred in the earth. Even though these movies are entertaining, they depict a view of how wildlife, plant life, and the earth's environment drastically changed, albeit for the worse. For the most part, the release of carbon dioxide is the causal effect of the death and destruction of the planet as it was known at that time. There has been an ongoing debate as to the direct reason for the atmosphere’s chemical composition, including the release of harmful gases. The article, Melting of massive ice 'lid' resulted in huge release of carbon dioxide at the end of the Ice Age, written by Jenny Roberts (www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160104163203.htm), suggests the melting of sea ice "caused the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide" rather than the

The reading states that there were three theories that scientists proposed to be what caused the little ice age, and provides three reasons of support. However, the professor opposes this by saying unfortunately these three theories are outdated and scientists have been found new proposals, and refutes each of the author`s reasons.

A second study states “Although some records are available from the 1600s and 1700s , systematic measurements of climate began in the mid-1800s. The data include measurements of surface temperature over land and the oceans, precipitation amounts, sea-ice extents, and global sea levels. Since the 1970s, satellite studies have provided additional data on temperature trends at Earth’s surface and through the layers of the atmosphere” (“Global Warming- Britannica”). The second source backs up the first source with exact quantitative data about changes in the first. (See pictures on page 6-7 ). The first topic of the United Nation’s Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report is “Observed Changes and their Cause” which states “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850” (“United Nations” pg 7). These three sources prove, through scientific observational facts, that the climate of the Earth’s surface is changing very rapidly, therefore, proving that through conclusive science the topic of climate changer is accurate.

Will the ice ages happen again? Ice Ages are dramatically landform changing points in time when the temperatures around the world, including the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth, are consistently cold for spans of over thousands of years. Ice ages force a glacial period (when thick, large sheets of ice cover a massive portion of the Earth’s northern hemisphere). Studies show that ice used to cover approximately 30% of the Earth during our last ice age. A point in time can be classified as an ice age as long there are permanent ice sheets, ice glaciers of size over 50,000 km2. That’s roughly 9 football fields. So technically, we’re in the middle of an ice age because we still have large ice sheets such as Greenland and Antarctica.

The Earth has maintained records of its climatic conditions in glaciers and ice caps, sediments from lakes and oceans, within the skeletons of coral reefs, as well as tree rings. The study of these samples is known as paleoclimatology. These environmental recorders can be used by scientists to estimate past conditions. Common findings from paleoclimatologists (those who study environmental evidence to gain insight on what the past climate was like and why) indicate that the Earth’s climate is always changing. Further examination shows that the Earth’s climate is able to drastically shift in a matter of years or decades. A main focus in paleoclimatology is to distinguish whether the

No one in the scientific community would argue with the premise that the earth’s climate has changed over the eons of its existence or that it will continue to change. The arguments now revolve around if mankind’s use of the environment has specifically altered our climate.

‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have