Next Ice Age Begins

art bell ^ | 02/08/02 | Will Hart

[Let's Roll]

"Looks like its time to go back to crying ice age."

Right, the professional enviros, pseudo scientists and assorted lefties have to eat don't they? They'll manage to spin this into some cause they can make money off of.

[shortyxeric]

hey how can the earth not be melting if the sun is creating heat that melts almost everything and absorbs pretty much any liquid

[shortyxeric]

exactly what does the stock market have to do anything with global warming?

[shortyxeric]

is this so?.... well if this is true when is the next ice age suppose to be? it says its suppose to be in the next 15000 years but with the bad data the scientists are giving I believe it can happen any time or day of the years to come

[shortyxeric]

so if we are coming close to the 10000 mark exactly how many years before the next ice age? and if we are close to the next ice age why don't scientists know it themselves? why do they believe its in like another 15000...

[SauronOfMordor]

A while back Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Michael Flynn wrote a SF novel that postulated that we were overdue for an ice age and "global warming" was the only think holding it off. And when the eco-nuts cut down on greenhouse gasses

[RightWhale]

As long as this old thread is back for a while, we had snow flurries yesterday, about 6 hours of snow flurries and frost in the garden for the second day. There was no accumulation, but there was also no sun and it was too cold for shorts and wife-beater.

[shortyxeric]

Firstly how do we actually know there is going to be an ice age unless we experience it for ourselves and then record it in our history books otherwise we might just be on a wild iceage hunt that might never even occur. Even if our decendants learn about the anomoly that is to come what can they do about it it's a natural phenomenon so you can't prevent it only slow its process down. wouldn't it be better to speed up the process of global warming and that we take the fall and experience it for ourselves so that our decendents don't have to worry about it for another hundred thousands of years? also this way we have something to put in the books and we wont have to be wondering if there is such a thing called an iceage or even global warming

[humblegunner]

Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey, and Foxy Loxy (especially Foxy Loxy) had a good chance to snag large government grants to study and model this new phenomena.

Foxy Loxy squandered the grant money, his antics in Dallas are widely known.

[ancient_geezer]

is this so?.... well if this is true when is the next ice age suppose to be?

The average per interglacial warm period is around 8-10kyrs with a ~90kr ice age.

The geophysical record of such things indicates we are closer to the expected end of the current inter-glacial period than we are the beginning:

 

 

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

 

Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years

Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice

 

A more detail study of why the 100kyr cycle exists and what is driving it.

 

Spectrum of 100-kyr glacial cycle: Orbital inclination, not eccentricity
Richard A. Muller^* and Gordon J. MacDonald

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle
by Richard A. Muller

Figure 2. Spectral fingerprints in the vicinity of the 100 kyr peak: (a) for data from Site 607; (b) for data of the SPECMAP stack; (c) for a model with linear response to eccentricity, calculated from the results of Quinn et al. (ref 6); (d) for the nonlinear ice-sheet model of Imbrie and Imbrie (ref 22); and (e) for a model with linear response to the inclination of the Earth's orbit (measured with respect to the invariable plane). All calculations are for the period 0-600 ka. The 100 kyr peak in the data in (a) and (b) do not fit the fingerprints from the theories (c) and (d), but are a good match to the prediction from inclination in (e). return to beginning


Far more important to our present analysis, however, is the fact that the predicted 100 kyr "eccentricity line" is actually split into 95 and 125 kyr components, in serious conflict with the single narrow line seen in the climate data. The splitting of this peak into a doublet is well known theoretically (see, e.g., ref 5), but in comparisons with data the two peaks in the eccentricity were merged into a single broad peak by the poor resolution of the Blackman-Tukey algorithm (as was done, for example, in ref 8). The single narrow peak in the climate data was likewise broadened, and it appeared to match the broad eccentricity feature.

***

Figure 3. Variations of the inclination vector of the Earth's orbit. The inclination i is the angle between this vector and the vector of the reference frame; Omega is the azimuthal angle = the angle of the ascending node (in astronomical jargon).. In (A), (B), and (C) the measurements are made with respect to the zodiacal (or ecliptic) frame, i.e. the frame of the current orbit of the Earth. In (D), (E), and (F) the motion has been trasformed to the invariable frame, i.e. the frame of the total angular momentum of the solar system. Note that the primary period of oscillation in the zodiacal frame (A) is 70 kyr, but in the invariable plane (D) it is 100 kyr.

 

 

There is evidence from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (ref 39) of a narrow dust band extending only two degrees from the invariable plane. The precise location of these bands is uncertain; they may be orbiting in resonant lock with the Earth (ref 40, 41). It is not clear that these bands contain sufficient material to cause the observed climate effects. We note, however, that even small levels of accretion can scavenge greenhouse gases from the stratosphere, and cool the Earth's climate through the mechanism proposed by Hoyle (ref 30). The dust could also affect climate by seeding the formation of much larger ice crystals. The accreting material could be meteoric, originating as particles too large to give detectable infrared radiation.

Data on noctilucent clouds (mesospheric clouds strongly associated with the effects of high meteors and high altitude dust) supports the hypothesis that accretion increase significantly when the Earth passes through the invariable plane. As shown in Figure 6, a strong peak in the number of observed noctilucent clouds occurs on about July 9 in the northern hemisphere (ref 41, 42) within about a day of the date when the Earth passes through the invariable plane (indicated with an arrow). In the southern hemisphere the peak is approximately on January 9, also consistent with the invariable plane passage, but the data are sparse. The coincidence of the peaks of the clouds with the passage through the invariable plane had not previously been noticed, and it supports the contention that there is a peak in accretion at these times. On about the same date there is a similarly narrow peak is observed in the number of polar mesospheric clouds (ref43) and there is a broad peak in total meteoric flux (ref 44). It is therefore possible that it is the trail of meteors in the upper atmosphere, rather than dust, that is responsible for the climate effects.


Fig 6. Frequency of noctilucent clouds vs. day of year, in (A) the northern hemisphere, and in (B) the sourthern hemisphere (ref 41, 42). The arrows indicate the dates when the earth passes through the invariable plane. The coincidence of these dates with the maxima in the noctilucent clouds suggests the presence of a thin ring around the sun. Peaks on the same dates are seen in Polar mesospheric clouds (ref 44) and in radar counts of meteors.

 

Some background independant studies of related factors:

 

Mysterious glowing clouds targeted by NASA
26 May, 2006

High-altitude noctilucent clouds have been mysteriously spreading around the world in recent years (Image: NASA/JSC/ES and IA)

 

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.252.html#1

INTERPLANETARY DUST PARTICLES (IDPs) are deposited on the Earth at the rate of about 10,000 tons per year. Does this have any effect on climate? Scientists at Caltech have found that ancient samples of helium-3 (coming mostly from IDPs) in oceanic sediments exhibit a 100,000-year periodicity. The researchers assert that their data, taken along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, support a recently enunciated idea that Earth's orbital inclination varies with a 100-kyr period; this notion in turn had been broached as an explanation for a similar periodicity in the succession of ice ages. (K.A. Farley and D.B. Patterson, Nature, 7 December 1995.)
Farley & Patterson 1998, http://www.elsevier.com/gej-ng/10/20/36/33/37/32/abstract.html
Farley http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~farley/
Farley http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/18/23/54/21/49/abstract.html

 

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/dec96/noaa96-78.html

ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DURING LAST GLACIAL PERIOD COULD BE TIED TO DUST-INDUCED REGIONAL WARMING

Preliminary new evidence suggests that periodic increases in atmospheric dust concentrations during the glacial periods of the last 100,000 years may have resulted in significant regional warming, and that this warming may have triggered the abrupt climatic changes observed in paleoclimate records, according to a scientist at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current scientific thinking is that the dust concentrations contributed to global cooling.

[Monti Cello]

You have no idea what you are talking about. There are living trees in eastern California that are nearly 5000 years old, not to mention cross-verified, cross-dated sediment and ice core archives going back hundreds of thousands to millions of years that are not difficult to interpret. You need to get a clue before you can correct others. Try reading Bill Ruddiman's Earth's Climate: Past and Future - it's a great textbook, and you will be a better person for understanding the world around you.

[umgud]

exactly what does the stock market have to do anything with global warming?

My comment was meant to be satirical. (Is the earth cooling or warming? Yes.)

[Fruitbat]

It's about time we get over our melting of the earth because of our SUVs

At some point we may need to pass legislation to require folks to drive vehicles that get no better than 30 mpg so that we can begin warming the earth up again. I'd hate to freeze to death prolongedly. :D

Hummers 'round the house...!

[Fruitbat]

we need to start warming this planet up.... but we puny humans can't seem to.

Great point! Suppose we were facing an imminent and rapidly developing ice age. What could we do to warm it up. NADA! Funny how we can warm it up however when there's an agenda.

[samtheman]

it was going to be after 10000 years, but that was before the manbearpig came on the scene and threw the world off its axis