During its history, our Earth has experienced several glaciations. Periods during which large areas of its northern hemisphere became covered in ice. It happened, for example, about 100,000 years ago. In a few thousand years, the mountain glaciers then expanded dramatically to form ice caps spanning much of Canada, Siberia and northern Europe.
Zealandia Switch: A New Ice Age Theory
How could this have happened? For this time, due to the natural variations of the orbit of our Earth, believe the scientists. With the result, a summer cooling on the side of thenorthern hemisphere triggering a general glaciation. But there is a shadow on the board. Because this phenomenon does not appear sufficient to cover northern Europe with ice.
Because the North Atlantic Current – also known as the Gulf Stream – tends to carry warm waters to the northwest coasts of our continent. Thus in general, Scandinavia, although located at a latitude similar to that of the Canadian Arctic, has temperatures that are too high for ice to form.
Models not only good at predicting the future
To understand how ice caps could still have appeared in northern Europe around 100,000 years ago, researchers from theuniversity of arizona (USA) have developed an extremely complex Earth system model. Enough to recreate in a very realistic way, the conditions that existed at the beginning of this ice age, and…
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