Climate science: Earth's narrow escape from a big freeze
(2016) Nature : international weekly journal of science — Vol. 529, n° 7585, p. 162-163 (2016)
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- Abstract
- Despite decades of research, the conditions responsible for the inception of a glacial period have remained unclear. Why, for example, did the Earth not enter a glacial period in recent times, when Northern Hemisphere insolation patterns resembled those often associated with other inceptions? These authors use a climate model of intermediate complexity, constrained by evidence from ice cores, to quantify the insolation required to trigger a glacial period for any level of atmospheric CO2: high CO2 levels, such as in the late Holocene, demand that insolation fall below an unusually low level. The simulations suggest that in the absence of human perturbations to the climate system, the present interglacial would persist for tens of thousands of years. With human-generated releases of carbon, there appears to be little chance of a new glacial period over the next 100,000 years.
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Citations
Crucifix, M. (2016). Climate science: Earth’s narrow escape from a big freeze. Nature : international weekly journal of science, 529(7585), 162-163. https://doi.org/10.1038/529162a (Original work published 2016)