It's common knowledge among climate scientists that ice ages occur regularly on Earth. Multi-millennial winters set in about once every 11,000 years or so, and the latest one failed to start. Scientists believe that global warming and climate change are responsible for the current state of affairs.
The last ice age that occurred on schedule took place about 11,600 years ago, so we're already more than half of a millennium late for the next one. According to experts, it could be that this natural cycle will stop now, primarily because of the vast amounts of pollutants we are releasing into the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are warming up the planet, putting a dent in various natural cycles. Apparently, the phenomenon is also influencing processes we had no idea were susceptible to such changes.
At this point, figuring out what the latest discovery means is still far away, since the issue is complex. Scientists need to analyze the implications of their findings in a holistic manner, meaning that they need to look at multiple systems – and how they relate – at the same time.
A team of experts from the
University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, published a research paper in this week's issue of the top journal Nature Geoscience, highlighting how the next ice age would have occurred if CO2 concentrations were normal, and if we weren't around to influence it.
Through complex simulations, the researchers were able to determine that the ice age would start in the next 1,000 years, no later. While this may seem like a lot to us, it's in fact a very brief period of geologic time, from our planet's perspective.
The new study was also able to discover what experts call glacial inception, or the signature of how an ice age gets activated. The main way they went about doing so was to analyze temperature contrasts developing between Greenland and Antarctica.
“The mystery of the ice ages, which represent the dominant mode of climate change over the past few million years, is that while we can identify the various ingredients that have contributed to them, it’s the arrangement of these ingredients, and how they march to the beat of subtle changes in seasonality, that we lack an understanding of,” Dr Luke Skinner explains.
The expert, who holds an appointment as a professor at the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences, led the work with professor David Hodell, also from Cambridge, and University College London (UCL) colleague, professor Chronis Tzedakis.
Find us on Google+
