Monday, December 3, 2012
The Next Ice Age
http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/nexticeage.htm
The climate of earth has fluctuated quite a bit over the last 4.6 billion years of our planet's history and it can be expected that the climate will continue to change. One of the most intriguing questions in earth science is whether the periods of ice ages is over or are we living in an "interglacial," or period of time between ice ages?
The geologic time period we are now living in is known as the Holocene. This epoch began about 11,000 years ago which was the end of the last glacial period and the end of the Pleistocene epoch. The Pleistocene was an epoch of cool glacial and warmer interglacial periods which began about 1.8 million years ago. Since the glacial period known as the "Wisconsin" in North America and "Würm" in Europe when over 10 million square miles (about 27 million square kilometers) of North America, Asia, and Europe were covered by ice, almost all of the ice sheets covering the land and glaciers in the mountains have retreated. Today about ten percent of the earth's surface is covered by ice; 96% of this ice is located in Antarctica and Greenland. Glacial ice is also present is such diverse places as Alaska, Canada, New Zealand, Asia, and California.
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Daisy Aguilar
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