glacial cycles, glaciers, ice ages, new discoveries, study

Why Did Glacial Cycles Intensify a Million Years Ago?

Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth’s climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the MPT, cycles between glacial (colder) and interglacial (warmer) periods happened every 41,000 years. After the MPT, ...

Troy Oakes

Glaciers at the water's edge.

What Causes Ice Ages to End?

New University of Melbourne research has revealed that ice ages over the last million years ended when the tilt angle of the Earth’s axis was approaching higher values. During these times, longer and stronger summers melted the large Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, propelling the Earth’s climate into a warm “interglacial” state, like the one we’ve ...

Troy Oakes

Trees covered in snow and frost.

Mystery of How Early Animals Survived the Ice Age Unraveled

How did life survive the most severe ice age? A McGill University-led research team has found the first direct evidence that glacial meltwater provided a crucial lifeline to eukaryotes during Snowball Earth, when the oceans were cut off from life-giving oxygen, answering a question puzzling scientists for years. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the ...

Troy Oakes

Maxwell Lechte examines rock formations.

Study Finds Tectonics in the Tropics Trigger Earth’s Ice Ages

Over the last 540 million years, the Earth has weathered three major ice ages — periods during which global temperatures plummeted, producing extensive ice sheets and glaciers that have stretched beyond the polar caps. Now scientists at MIT, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of California at Berkeley have identified the ...

Troy Oakes

There have been three major ice ages.