Is another ice age predicted for the future?
Global cooling
The idea that ice ages cycles were predictable appears to have become conflated with the idea that another one was due "soon" - perhaps because much of this study was done by geologists, who are accustomed to dealing with very long time scales and use "soon" to refer to periods of thousands of years. A strict application of the Milankovitch theory does not allow the prediction of a "rapid" ice age onset (i.e., less than a century or two) since the fastest orbital period is about 20,000 years. Some creative ways around this were found, notably one championed by Nigel Calder under the name of "snowblitz", but these ideas did not gain wide acceptance.
The Diamond Age
"The Diamond Age" can be seen as a sequel to "Snow Crash", set many years later. This reading is based on a connection between Y.T., a major character in "Snow Crash", and the aged neo-Victorian Miss Matheson in "The Diamond Age", who drops oblique references to her past as a hard-edged skateboarder. This would set "The Diamond Age" some 80–100 years after "Snow Crash".
Alps
Various models of climate change have been projected into the 22nd century for the Alps, with an expectation that a trend toward increased temperatures will have an effect on snowfall, snowpack, glaciation, and river runoff. Significant changes, of both natural and anthropogenic origins, have already been diagnosed from observations.
Arctic Tale
Throughout the film, narrator Queen Latifah makes allusions to how the rising temperature is affecting the animals in the ice kingdom. A message at the end of the animal footage notes that if the current trend continues, there will be no Arctic ice remaining by the year 2040. During the closing credits, several children talk about how global warming has had a detrimental effect on the animals such as the ones in "Arctic Tale" as well as the people around the world. Afterwards, the National Geographic "green" website is shown on the screen, as National Geographic is a presenter of the film
Timeline of glaciation
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The third ice age, and possibly most severe, is estimated to have occurred from 720 to 635 Ma (million years) ago, in the Neoproterozoic Era, and it has been suggested that it produced a second "Snowball Earth", in which the Earth iced over completely. It has been suggested also that the end of this second cold period was responsible for the subsequent Cambrian Explosion, a time of rapid diversification of multicelled life during the Cambrian Period. However, this hypothesis is still controversial, though is growing in popularity among researchers, as evidence in its favor has mounted.
Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
On page 2, the WWF report cited an article in the 5 June 1999 issue of "New Scientist" which quoted Syed Hasnain, Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI), saying that most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region "will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming". That article was based on an email interview, and says that "Hasnain's four-year study indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline." Both the article and the WWF report referred to Hasnain's unpublished 1999 ICSI study, "Report on Himalayan Glaciology", which does not estimate a date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.
Global cooling
While these discussions were ongoing in scientific circles, other accounts appeared in the popular media. In their June 24, 1974 issue, "Time" presented an article titled "Another Ice Age?" that noted "the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades" but noted that "Some scientists... think that the cooling trend may be only temporary."
Glacial period
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The last glacial period ended about 15,000 years ago. The Holocene epoch is the current interglacial. A time with no glaciers on Earth is considered a greenhouse climate state.
Within the Quaternary (about 2.6 Ma to present), there have been a number of glacials and interglacials.
Hockey stick graph
A study of the changing climate of the Arctic over the last 2,000 years, by an international consortium led by Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University, was published on 4 September 2009. They examined sediment core records from 14 Arctic lakes, supported by tree ring and ice core records. Their findings showed a long term cooling trend consistent with cycles in the Earth's orbit which would be expected to continue for a further 4,000 years but had been reversed in the 20th century by a sudden rise attributed to greenhouse gas emissions. The decline had continued through the Medieval period and the Little Ice Age. The most recent decade, 1999–2008, was the warmest of the period, and four of the five warmest decades occurred between 1950 and 2000. Scientific American described the graph as largely replicating "the so-called 'hockey stick,' a previous reconstruction".
Polar seas
Models predict a latitudinal effect in response to climate change. These would be expected to be first obvious in polar and subpolar regions. The decline of arctic ocean summer ice coverage was assumed to be one such sign, however, the reversal of that trend leaves the question open as the origins of the now reversed 30 year trend. In 1979, the cover of Time magazine was illustrated with an image of arctic ice covering and expanding BEYOND the arctic basin, opinion seems to have little value. Real data reveal the trend of ice coverage to be on the increase. If this increase will continue, only time will tell. Developed nations ceased the production and use of chlorofluorocarbons and the atmospheric abundance and consequent ozone depletion are generally on the decrease. ozone hole Breaking-off of polar ice shelves is a continuing process with increases in Western Antarctica balanced by decreases in Eastern Antarctica. Careful study has revealed that the volume of ice in Western Antarctica was incorrectly estimated and shows no significant change attributable to climate change over the observation period.
John D. Hamaker
In the 1970s, a series of scientific conferences concluded that the world's climate is cooling. Books such as "The Cooling", "The Weather Conspiracy", "The Weather Machine & The Threat Of Ice", "Climates Of Hunger", "Ice Ages" and "Climate: Present, Past & Future", warned of a coming ice age within decades. In 1975, Newsweek ran an article entitled "The Cooling World" that foretold the decimation of agricultural productivity based on a dramatic decrease in the Earth's temperature. and the New York Times published the article "Scientists ask why world is changing; Major cooling may be ahead". In parallel, books such as "A Blueprint for Survival", "The Limits To Growth", and "The Population Bomb", warned of multiple social, economic, ecological and population crises. At the same time, Hamaker continued to generate articles and bulletins as well as campaign, on what was by now his main pre-occupation, the remineralization of the world's soils.
Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera
Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera is a theoretical physicist and researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He disagrees with predictions about future climate change, arguing that proponents ignore the most important factor, which he submits is solar activity. In the summer of 2008, he also predicted the world would soon enter a little ice age.
Global catastrophic risk
In the history of the Earth, many ice ages are known to have occurred. An ice age would have a serious impact on civilization because vast areas of land (mainly in North America, Europe, and Asia) could become uninhabitable. Currently, the world is in an interglacial period within a much older glacial event. The last glacial expansion ended about 10,000 years ago, and all civilizations evolved later than this. Scientists do not predict that a natural ice age will occur anytime soon. The amount of heat trapping gases emitted into Earth's Oceans and atmosphere will prevent the next ice age, which otherwise would begin in around 50,000 years, and likely more glacial cycles.
Ice age
There is considerable evidence that over the very recent period of the last 100–1000 years, the sharp increases in human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has caused the parallel sharp and accelerating increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases which trap the sun's heat. The consensus theory of the scientific community is that the resulting greenhouse effect is a principal cause of the increase in global warming which has occurred over the same period, and a chief contributor to the accelerated melting of the remaining glaciers and polar ice. A 2012 investigation finds that dinosaurs released methane through digestion in a similar amount to humanity's current methane release, which "could have been a key factor" to the very warm climate 150 million years ago.
Greenhouse and icehouse Earth
Without the human influence on the greenhouse gas concentration, the Earth would be heading toward a glacial period. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that in absence of human-made global warming the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now (see Milankovitch cycles).
Kenneth Hsu
"" presented a theory of climate and history, looking at future climate changes based on historical, archaeological and helio-biological evidence. It made the prediction of global cooling of the planet in the last decades of the 21st century, and the coming of a little ice age before 2500. The claim forecast was corroborated by scientists Khabibullo Abdusamatov, Yuk Yung, John Cassey, Nigel Calder, Henrik Svensmark, Alexander Chizhevsky and John D. Hamaker . Orell Fussli Verlag  published the book after an article about Hsu appeared in Bilanz Magazine  in 1998. Earlier, in 1992, Hsu wrote in "Geographical Magazine", "Perhaps our species was created by Gaia to prevent a catastrophic chill" in reference to his published paper "'Is Gaia Endothermic?", on which the book is also based.
Hubert Lamb
In the preface to his 1984 edition of the book, Lamb noted studies of the "carbon dioxide problem" and called for more investigation of past climate, particularly "evidence that some major climatic changes took place surprisingly quickly." He outlined recent research suggesting that the next glaciation would begin in 3,000 to 7,000 years, and wrote "It is to be noted here that there is no necessary contradiction between forecast expectations of (a) some renewed (or continuation of) slight cooling of world climate for some years to come, e.g. from volcanic or solar activity variations; (b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter; and this followed in turn by (c) a glaciation lasting (like the previous ones) for many thousands of years.”In August 2006, the Climatic Research Unit Building in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia was renamed the Hubert Lamb Building.
In the same year, Lamb was hailed as 'instrumental in establishing the study of climate change as a serious research subject' in a report listing the 'top 100 world-changing discoveries, innovations and research projects to come out of the UK universities in the last 50 years'.
Arctic
Due to the poleward migration of the planet's isotherms (about per decade during the past 30 years as a consequence of global warming), the Arctic region (as defined by tree line and temperature) is currently shrinking. Perhaps the most alarming result of this is Arctic sea ice shrinkage. There is a large variance in predictions of Arctic sea ice loss, with models showing near-complete to complete loss in September from 2040 to some time well beyond 2100. About half of the analyzed models show near-complete to complete sea ice loss in September by the year 2100.
Physics of the Future
Kaku discusses the draining of oil on the planet by pointing to the Hubbert curve, and the rising problem of immigrants who wish to live the American dream of wasteful energy consumption. He predicts that hydrogen and solar energy will be the future, noting how Henry Ford and Thomas Edison bet on whether oil or electricity would dominate, and describing fusion with lasers or magnetic fields, and dismisses cold fusion as "a dead end". Kaku suggests that nations are reluctant to deal with global warming because the extravagance of oil, being the cheapest source of energy, encourages economic growth. Kaku believes that in the far future, room-temperature superconductors will usher the era of magnet-powered floating cars and trains.
Early anthropocene
In his overdue-glaciation hypothesis Ruddiman claims that an incipient ice age would probably have begun several thousand years ago, but the arrival of that scheduled ice age was forestalled by intense farming and deforestation by early farmers that began raising the level of greenhouse gases eight thousand years ago.
2014–15 North American winter
On October 16, 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center issued its U.S. Winter Outlook. This outlook indicated that below-average temperatures in parts of the south-central and southeastern United States would be favored, with above-average temperatures favored in the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and New England. Drought conditions were expected to improve in California's southern and northwestern regions, but no improvements were expected earlier than December or January. Above-average conditions were also expected to pervade the winter months in the western U.S., the Intermountain West extending across the U.S.–Canada border through New York and New England, and Alaska and Hawaii. The Precipitation Outlook favored above-average precipitation across the southern tier and Atlantic coast of the United States, with above-average precipitation also favored in southern Alaska and the Alaska panhandle. Below-average precipitation was favored in Hawaii, the northwestern United States, and near the Great Lakes region. The rest of the country was given an "equal chance" for either above- or below-average temperatures and/or precipitation.
Ice sheet
The IPCC projects that ice mass loss from melting of the Greenland ice sheet will continue to outpace accumulation of snowfall. Accumulation of snowfall on the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to outpace losses from melting. However, in the words of the IPCC, ""Dynamical processes related to ice flow not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing future sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude."" More research work is therefore required to improve the reliability of predictions of ice-sheet response on global warming. In 2018, scientists discovered channels between the East and West Antarctic ice sheets that may allow melted ice to flow more quickly to the sea.
John D. Hamaker
In the book, Dave Foreman, Founder of Earth First! wrote: "An ice age is coming, and I welcome it as a much needed cleansing. I see no possible solution to our ruination of Earth except for a drastic reduction of the human population." Also quoted is S. W. Matthews, Assistant Editor, "National Geographic": "The ice age, which has really not left the planet for two million years, is reasserting itself. The warm time... is over. The next great return of ice has begun." and Paul Gersper, Professor of Soil Science, University of California: "The actions recommended here are urgently needed to avoid global disaster."
Arctic sea ice decline
Many scientists have attempted to estimate when the Arctic will be "ice-free". Professor Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge is among these scientists. Wadhams and several others have noted that climate model predictions have been overly conservative regarding sea ice decline. A 2013 paper suggested that models commonly underestimate the solar radiation absorption characteristics of wildfire soot. A 2006 paper predicted "near ice-free September conditions by 2040". Overland and Wang (2013) investigated three different ways of predicting future sea ice levels. From sea ice models and recent satellite images it can be expected that a sea ice free summer will come before 2020. The IPCC AR5 (for at least one scenario) estimates an ice-free summer might occur around 2050. The Third U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), released May 6, 2014, reports that the Arctic Ocean is expected to be ice free in summer before mid-century. Models that best match historical trends project a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer by the 2030s. However, these models do tend to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss since 2007. Based on the outcomes of several different models, Overland and Wang (2013) put the early limit for a sea ice free summer Arctic near 2040.
Glacial survival hypothesis
According to the northern cryptic glacial refugial hypothesis (or glacial survival hypothesis), during the last ice age cold tolerant plant and animal species (e.g. Norway spruce and Norwegian lemmings) persisted in ice-free microrefugia north of the Alps in Europe. The alternative hypothesis of no persistence and postglacial immigration of plants and animals from southern refugia in Europe (southern refugia paradigm) is sometimes also called the tabula rasa hypothesis.
Over the past plants and animals have persisted through long periods of climate change including several glacial and interglacial periods. There is a long-standing debate on what happened to the species that were inhabiting high-latitidue regions during the Pleistocene ice age. Two main scenarios are usually considered. The first scenario proposes a total extinction of species within glaciated areas with survival events in peripheral refugia in the south and successive massive postglacial migration into empty areas (tabula rasa hypothesis). The second scenario proposes long-term in situ survival within glaciated regions (glacial survival hypothesis), either in isolated northern ice-free micro-refugia at the edge of the ice sheet, or on exposed mountains not covered with ice within the ice sheet (nunatak hypothesis).
Greenland ice sheet
If the entire of ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise , over 14,000 years at current rates of melting. Recently, fears have grown that continued climate change will make the Greenland Ice Sheet cross a threshold where long-term melting of the ice sheet is inevitable. Climate models project that local warming in Greenland will be to during this century. Ice sheet models project that such a warming would initiate the long-term melting of the ice sheet, leading to a complete melting of the ice sheet (over centuries), resulting in a global sea level rise of about . Such a rise would inundate almost every major coastal city in the world. How fast the melt would eventually occur is a matter of discussion. According to the IPCC 2001 report, such warming would, if kept from rising further after the 21st Century, result in 1 to 5 meter sea level rise over the next millennium due to Greenland ice sheet melting. Some scientists have cautioned that these rates of melting are overly optimistic as they assume a linear, rather than erratic, progression. James E. Hansen has argued that multiple positive feedbacks could lead to nonlinear ice sheet disintegration much faster than claimed by the IPCC. According to a 2007 paper, "we find no evidence of millennial lags between forcing and ice sheet response in paleoclimate data. An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway."
Future of Earth
Historically, there have been cyclical ice ages in which glacial sheets periodically covered the higher latitudes of the continents. Ice ages may occur because of changes in ocean circulation and continentality induced by plate tectonics. The Milankovitch theory predicts that glacial periods occur during ice ages because of astronomical factors in combination with climate feedback mechanisms. The primary astronomical drivers are a higher than normal orbital eccentricity, a low axial tilt (or obliquity), and the alignment of summer solstice with the aphelion. Each of these effects occur cyclically. For example, the eccentricity changes over time cycles of about 100,000 and 400,000 years, with the value ranging from less than 0.01 up to 0.05. This is equivalent to a change of the semiminor axis of the planet's orbit from 99.95% of the semimajor axis to 99.88%, respectively.
Ice age
Matthias Kuhle's geological theory of Ice Age development was suggested by the existence of an ice sheet covering the Tibetan Plateau during the Ice Ages (Last Glacial Maximum?). According to Kuhle, the plate-tectonic uplift of Tibet past the snow-line has led to a surface of c. 2,400,000 square kilometres (930,000 sq mi) changing from bare land to ice with a 70% greater albedo. The reflection of energy into space resulted in a global cooling, triggering the Pleistocene Ice Age. Because this highland is at a subtropical latitude, with 4 to 5 times the insolation of high-latitude areas, what would be Earth's strongest heating surface has turned into a cooling surface.
Tim Patterson
In June 2007 he authored a general interest article in the Financial Post (the business section of the National Post, a major Canadian newspaper) predicting general climatic cooling as the sun enters Solar cycle 25 about 2018. He based his prediction on the close correlation between solar and climate cycles in his high resolution analysis of late Holocene cores deposited under anoxic conditions within deep Western Canadian fjords. Solar cycle 25 will be as weak as solar cycles in the early 19th century during a very cold phase of the Little Ice Age. At this time drought and short growing seasons would have made present day agricultural practices used in areas like the grain growing region of western Canada impossible. In a November 2015 address to the Canadian International Council (CIC) "Climate Change: Ottawa, and the Provinces are Going to Paris" he stated that in addition to concerns over the long-term impact of global warming it would be prudent for Canadian policy makers and planners to be made aware that "climatic cooling associated with Solar Cycle 25 and a corresponding trough in the Gleissberg Cycle may negatively impact the Canadian agricultural sector. During any climatic warming agricultural methods used to the south can be immediately adapted. However, cooling such as may occur beginning about 2018 would be an agricultural and national disaster as no one is farming north of us."
Little Ice Age
Although the original designation of a Little Ice Age referred to reduced temperature of Europe and North America, there is some evidence of extended periods of cooling outside this region, but it is not clear whether they are related or independent events. Mann states:
While there is evidence that many other regions outside Europe exhibited periods of cooler conditions, expanded glaciation, and significantly altered climate conditions, the timing and nature of these variations are highly variable from region to region, and the notion of the Little Ice Age as a globally synchronous cold period has all but been dismissed.
Effects of global warming
Solomon "et al." (2007) assessed the potential impacts of climate change on summertime Arctic sea ice extent. Assuming high growth in greenhouse gas emissions (SRES A2), some models projected that Arctic sea ice in the summer could largely disappear by the end of the 21st century. More recent projections suggest that the Arctic summers could be ice-free (defined as ice extent less than 1 million square km) as early as 2025–2030.
Blaster Master Zero
In a distant future, earth falls into an ice age, after countless wars and environmental disasters. Due to the ice age, the human race was forced to live underground. When the ice age came to an end, humanity began making methods they learned while living underground to restore the planet and the environment. During that time, a large, mysterious comet fell to the earth, but that did not hinder their effort to restore the lost ecosystems, and humans were able to live on the earth's surface once again.
Climate change in the Arctic
The Arctic ocean will likely be free of summer sea ice before the year 2100, but many different dates have been projected. One study suggests 2060–2080 and another suggests 2030. A 2013 study showed that simply extending summertime ice melting trends into the future in a straight line predicts an ice-free summertime Arctic as early as by 2020.
Ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation, known in popular terminology as the Ice Age.Individual pulses of cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or, alternatively, "glacials", "glaciations", or "glacial stage", or colloquially "ice ages"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials", with both climatic pulses are being part of the Quaternary or other periods in Earth's history.
Little Ice Age
Orbital forcing from cycles in the earth's orbit around the sun has, for the past 2,000 years, caused a long-term northern hemisphere cooling trend that continued through the Middle Ages and the Little Ice Age. The rate of Arctic cooling is roughly 0.02 °C per century. This trend could be extrapolated to continue into the future, possibly leading to a full ice age, but the twentieth-century instrumental temperature record shows a sudden reversal of this trend, with a rise in global temperatures attributed to greenhouse gas emissions.
John D. Hamaker
In Campe's letter to Newsweek Magazine in October 2006, she warned that global warming could trigger an ice age and that soil remineralization and reforestation were the solutions. In the same period, major magazines expressed concern of a coming ice age including The Atlantic Monthly, "National Geographic", Discover Magazine, The Spectator and BBC Focus Magazine. Institutes in Northern Europe and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute shared the concern.
Ice age
The geological record appears to show that ice ages start when the continents are in positions which block or reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles and thus allow ice sheets to form. The ice sheets increase Earth's reflectivity and thus reduce the absorption of solar radiation. With less radiation absorbed the atmosphere cools; the cooling allows the ice sheets to grow, which further increases reflectivity in a positive feedback loop. The ice age continues until the reduction in weathering causes an increase in the greenhouse effect.
Ryfylke
At Haukalivatnet lake (near Lysefjorden) there is a distinct end moraine presumably created by a prehistoric glacier. This moraine led professor Jens Esmark (in 1824) to formulate the theory of an ice age over Scandinavia and other parts of the world. Esmark believed that climate changes due to the changes of the Earth's orbit caused ice ages.
Climate state
A 2018 study concluded that we soon could cross a temperature threshold that would initiate self-reinforcing feedbacks, leading to an additional temperature rise not seen for at least 1.2 million years and causing the Earth to enter a new hothouse climate state. The BBC cites the researcher as saying, "The climate might stabilise with 4-5 degrees C of warming above the pre-industrial age. Thanks to the melting of ice sheets, the seas could be 10-60 metres higher than now. Essentially, this would mean that some parts of the Earth would become uninhabitable." The study tries to answer where exactly this temperature threshold is, suggesting that it could be below the 2 °C temperature target agreed upon by the Paris climate deal.
Morris–Putnam point
In 1968, a common law couple, Dr. Adamly Morris, and Dr. Klein Marshal popularized the theory through a series of climate change lectures predicting the second ice age. The apparent soundness of the math fortified the climate change community and several movies were made.
Physical impacts of climate change
Our concern that BAU GHG scenarios would cause large sealevel rise this century (Hansen 2005) differs from estimates of IPCC (2001, 2007), which foresees little or no contribution to twentyfirst century sealevel rise from Greenland and Antarctica. However, the IPCC analyses and projections do not well account for the nonlinear physics of wet ice sheet disintegration, ice streams and eroding ice shelves, nor are they consistent with the palaeoclimate evidence we have presented for the absence of discernible lag between ice sheet forcing and sealevel rise.
History of climate change science
In the early 1970s, evidence that aerosols were increasing worldwide encouraged Reid Bryson and some others to warn of the possibility of severe cooling. Meanwhile, the new evidence that the timing of ice ages was set by predictable orbital cycles suggested that the climate would gradually cool, over thousands of years. For the century ahead, however, a survey of the scientific literature from 1965 to 1979 found 7 articles predicting cooling and 44 predicting warming (many other articles on climate made no prediction); the warming articles were cited much more often in subsequent scientific literature. Several scientific panels from this time period concluded that more research was needed to determine whether warming or cooling was likely, indicating that the trend in the scientific literature had not yet become a consensus.
John Nissen
Since early 2008, Nissen has been investigating geo-engineering, which he believes is urgently needed to save the Arctic sea ice. He has developed a theory that the system of Gulf Stream and Arctic ice cap serve as a thermostatic control system, for preventing the planet from heating above a certain temperature, approximately the current global temperature. The Arctic sea ice is an essential part of that control system, and it threatens to disappear (at end summer) possibly as soon as 2012 but likely by 2030 or 2040, thus disabling the thermostatic control of the planet, and allowing massive methane discharge from permafrost and disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet.
Climate state
The greenhouse has been the dominant state in Earth's past. Recovered ocean sediments of the past 120 million years contain evidence of the long-term transition from a greenhouse to icehouse climate state. A time when there are no glaciers on Earth is considered a greenhouse climate state. An ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets at Earth polar regions. The time during an Ice Age glacial period, when glaciers reach their maximum extent is referred to as icehouse climate state. There have been five known ice ages in the Earth's past, with the Earth experiencing currently an interglacial period (warming) during the present Quaternary Ice Age, identified as the "marine isotope stage 1" (MIS1) in the Holocene epoch (or recently the Anthropocene epoch).
Orbital forcing
It is sometimes asserted that the length of the current interglacial temperature peak will be similar to the length of the preceding interglacial peak (Sangamonian/Eem Stage), and that therefore we might be nearing the end of this warm period. However, this conclusion is probably mistaken: the lengths of previous interglacials were not particularly regular (see graphic at right). Berger and Loutre (2002) argue that “with or without human perturbations, the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years. The reason is a minimum in the eccentricity of Earth's orbit around the Sun.” Also, Archer and Ganopolski (2005) report that probable future CO emissions may be enough to suppress the glacial cycle for the next 500 kyr.
Climate of the Arctic
Climate models predict that the temperature increase in the Arctic over the next century will continue to be about twice the global average temperature increase. By the end of the 21st century, the annual average temperature in the Arctic is predicted to increase by , with more warming in winter ( than in summer. Decreases in sea-ice extent and thickness are expected to continue over the next century, with some models predicting the Arctic Ocean will be free of sea ice in late summer by the mid to late part of the century.
Ice age
The earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for around 11,700 years, and an article in "Nature" in 2004 argues that it might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now, due to the Milankovitch cycles. Moreover, anthropogenic forcing from increased greenhouse gases is estimated to potentially outweigh the orbital forcing of the Milankovitch cycles for hundreds of thousand of years.
Climate change feedback
Albedo change is also the main reason why IPCC predict polar temperatures in the northern hemisphere to rise up to twice as much as those of the rest of the world, in a process known as polar amplification. In September 2007, the Arctic sea ice area reached about half the size of the average summer minimum area between 1979 and 2000. Also in September 2007, Arctic sea ice retreated far enough for the Northwest Passage to become navigable to shipping for the first time in recorded history. The record losses of 2007 and 2008 may, however, be temporary.
Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center views 2030 as a "reasonable estimate" for when the summertime Arctic ice cap might be ice-free. The polar amplification of global warming is not predicted to occur in the southern hemisphere. The Antarctic sea ice reached its greatest extent on record since the beginning of observation in 1979, but the gain in ice in the south is exceeded by the loss in the north. The trend for global sea ice, northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere combined is clearly a decline.
Vebjørn Sand
“"Our future lays underneath that ice glacier. So to erect it on that glacier, and that part of Antarctica, (it) must never melt. The one outside the United Nations is intended to melt to show that Antarctica is melting."”
John Casey (climate change author)
Another central point in Casey's global cooling theory is the lack of counter strategy in regards to the advent of an ice age. Casey states that "solar hibernation" is ultimately inevitable and that the sun will continue to cycle into its next stage regardless of the actions of the common man.
Mendenhall Glacier
The glacier has recently come to the forefront of the international debate on global warming. The US Forest Service, which manages the Mendenhall Glacier, says "because glaciers are a product of climate, they respond to climate change." The Mendenhall glacier has been in retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1700s. In a joint article for the Juneau Empire Geologist Cathy Connor and Geophysicist Roman Motyka, both professors of the University of Alaska said "climatic warming coupled with ice loss through iceberg calving are the reasons the Mendenhall Glacier is retreating and shrinking." It is expected the glacier face will soon pull out of the lake. The Mendenhall receded 2.5 miles since circa 1500 due to a combination of natural and man-made climate change.
Global cooling
In 1972, Emiliani warned "Man's activity may either precipitate this new ice age or lead to substantial or even total melting of the ice caps...". By 1972 a group of glacial-epoch experts at a conference agreed that "the natural end of our warm epoch is undoubtedly near"; but the volume of Quaternary Research reporting on the meeting said that "the basic conclusion to be drawn from the discussions in this section is that the knowledge necessary for understanding the mechanism of climate change is still lamentably inadequate". Unless there were impacts from future human activity, they thought that serious cooling "must be expected within the next few millennia or even centuries"; but many other scientists doubted these conclusions.
Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period. Although it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300 to about 1850. Climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of the period, which varied according to local conditions.
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
In 2016, improved computer modeling revealed that the breakup of glaciers could lead to a steep rise in sea levels much more quickly than previously projected. “We’re in danger of handing young people a situation that’s out of their control,” according to James E. Hansen, the leader of a number of climate scientists who worked together to compile the study. In 2018, scientists concluded that high sea levels some 125,000 years ago, which were 6-9 m (20-30 ft) higher than today, were most likely due to the absence of the WAIS, and found evidence that the ice sheet collapsed under climate conditions similar to those of today.
Ice Age (franchise)
Ice Age is an American media franchise centering on a group of mammals surviving the Paleolithic ice age. It is produced by Blue Sky Studios, a division of 20th Century Fox, and featuring the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge. Five films have been released in the series thus far with "Ice Age" in 2002, "" in 2006, "" in 2009, "" in 2012, and "" in 2016. It has received some criticism for making no attempt to be scientifically accurate. As of April 2016, the franchise had generated $6 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Quaternary glaciation
Based on orbital models, the cooling trend initiated about 6,000 years ago will continue for another 23,000 years.
Slight changes in the Earth's orbital parameters might however indicate that, even without any human contribution, there will not be another glacial period for the next 50,000 years.
It is possible that the current cooling trend may be interrupted by an interstadial in about 60,000 years, with the next glacial maximum reached only in about 100,000 years.
2015–16 North American winter
On October 15, 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center issued its U.S. Winter Outlook. The presence of a strong El Niño event was expected to affect weather and climate patterns by influencing the position of the Pacific jet stream. According to CPC deputy director Mike Halpert at the time of the outlook, "A strong El Niño is in place and should exert a strong influence over our weather this winter" and "While temperature and precipitation impacts associated with El Niño are favored, El Niño is not the only player. Cold-air outbreaks and snow storms will likely occur at times this winter. However, the frequency, number and intensity of these events cannot be predicted on a seasonal timescale." Other oscillations anticipated to have some affect on winter in the United States were the Arctic oscillation and the Madden–Julian oscillation. The precipitation outlook indicated an elevated likelihood of above-average levels precipitation from central and southern California to Texas and Florida and northward to southern parts of New England. Above-average precipitation was also favored in southeastern Alaska, with below-average levels of precipitation favored in central and western Alaska, parts of the Northwestern U.S. and northern Rocky Mountain states, and areas in the vicinity of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. The temperature outlook favored below-average temperatures in the southern Plains and Southeastern United States. Above-average temperatures were most favored across the West and the northern half of the contiguous United States and Alaska and Hawaii. The drought outlook anticipated improvement in conditions in central and southern California by the end of January 2016, noting the possibility of additional alleviation of drought conditions in February and March. The outlook favored the removal of drought across large parts of the Southwestern U.S., with additional lessening or elimination of drought conditions likely in the southern Plains. Drought conditions were expected to persist across the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains, with development likely in Hawaii and areas in the vicinity of the northern Great Lakes region.
Arctic shipping routes
In 2030, these models predict that 90% of the current area of ice will remain in winter, and only 60% in September. In 2060, they forecast that these numbers will decrease to 85% and 40% respectively. Finally, in 2090, they anticipate 85% in winter, and less than 10% in August–September.
Ice age
The next well-documented ice age, and probably the most severe of the last billion years, occurred from 720 to 630 million years ago (the Cryogenian period) and may have produced a Snowball Earth in which glacial ice sheets reached the equator, possibly being ended by the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as produced by volcanoes. "The presence of ice on the continents and pack ice on the oceans would inhibit both silicate weathering and photosynthesis, which are the two major sinks for at present." It has been suggested that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian explosion, though this model is recent and controversial.
Little Ice Age
Scientists have tentatively identified seven possible causes of the Little Ice Age: orbital cycles; decreased solar activity; increased volcanic activity; altered ocean current flows; fluctuations in the human population in different parts of the world causing reforestation, or deforestation; and the inherent variability of global climate.
Last Glacial Period
The last glacial period is sometimes colloquially referred to as the "last ice age", though this use is incorrect because an ice age is a longer period of cold temperature in which year-round ice sheets are present near one or both poles. Glacials are colder phases within an ice age in which glaciers advance; glacials are separated by interglacials. Thus, the end of the last glacial period, which was about 11,700 years ago, is not the end of the last ice age since extensive year-round ice persists in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the past few million years the glacial-interglacial cycles have been "paced" by periodic variations in the Earth's orbit via Milankovitch cycles.
Ice (2011 miniseries)
Professor Thom Archer works at "Polar Alliance", a government service, whose purpose is to find connections between industrial activities in the Arctic and the melting of its ice. Thom tries to convince the authorities to revoke the licence of Halo. According to Thom the glaciers are melting very fast, and if they disappear the sea water will rise 7 metres, the North Atlantic Current will halt, potentially causing a new ice age in the Northern Hemisphere. Halo admits there is indeed a heating in that area but also claims Thom has no evidence there is a direct connection between the heating and Halo's activities. Therefore the government extends the licence.
The Ice Warriors
In the distant future at Brittanicus Base, senior control technician Jan Garrett and her staff struggle to control an ioniser they are using to slow the progress of glaciers rolling over Britain. Leader Clent is convinced they can avert a new Ice Age, but the group knows they are only a few hours away from being forced to abandon the base. Tensions rise when Penley, a maverick scientist who has defected from the team, is mentioned. The remaining senior scientist, Arden, is on the glacier searching for archaeological finds, where he discovers an armoured man within a block of ice. Arden and his colleagues dig the ice man from the glacier. Two scavengers observe their actions: the anti-technology Storr and Penley, who live in the tundra. When one of Arden’s team is killed in an avalanche, the other two return to base with the ice man. Storr too is injured in the avalanche.
Ice age
Maureen Raymo, William Ruddiman and others propose that the Tibetan and Colorado Plateaus are immense "scrubbers" with a capacity to remove enough from the global atmosphere to be a significant causal factor of the 40 million year Cenozoic Cooling trend. They further claim that approximately half of their uplift (and "scrubbing" capacity) occurred in the past 10 million years.
Ice age
Another worker, William Ruddiman, has suggested a model that explains the 100,000-year cycle by the modulating effect of eccentricity (weak 100,000-year cycle) on precession (26,000-year cycle) combined with greenhouse gas feedbacks in the 41,000- and 26,000-year cycles. Yet another theory has been advanced by Peter Huybers who argued that the 41,000-year cycle has always been dominant, but that the Earth has entered a mode of climate behavior where only the second or third cycle triggers an ice age. This would imply that the 100,000-year periodicity is really an illusion created by averaging together cycles lasting 80,000 and 120,000 years. This theory is consistent with a simple empirical multi-state model proposed by Didier Paillard. Paillard suggests that the late Pleistocene glacial cycles
can be seen as jumps between three quasi-stable climate states. The jumps are induced by the orbital forcing, while in the early Pleistocene the 41,000-year glacial cycles resulted from jumps between only two climate states. A dynamical
model explaining this behavior was proposed by Peter Ditlevsen. This is in support of the suggestion that the late Pleistocene glacial cycles are not due to the weak 100,000-year eccentricity cycle, but a non-linear response to mainly the 41,000-year obliquity cycle.
Quaternary glaciation
The Quaternary glaciation describes a geological time in Earth history, also known in popular terminology as the Ice Age, or Pleistocene glaciation, is a series of glacial events separated by interglacial events during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Ma (million years ago), and is ongoing.
It is one of five major glacial periods or "ice ages" in Earth's history since about 2.5 billion years ago; the preceding one, known as the Karoo Ice Age, lasted from about 360 to 260 Ma (Carboniferous to Mid-Permian). Outside of these ice ages, the Earth seems to have been completely ice-free, even at high latitudes.
2018–19 North American winter
On October 18, 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center released its U.S. Winter Outlook. The outlook noted a 70 to 75% chance of El Niño developing. CPC Deputy Director Mike Halpert specified that development was expected to occur by late fall to early winter. He added that while the El Niño was expected to be weak, it still had the potential to bring drier conditions to the northern United States and wetter conditions to the southern U.S. The outlook also noted the potential for the Arctic oscillation to bring colder-than-average conditions to the eastern U.S. and the possibility of the Madden-Julian oscillation contributing to heavy-precipitation events along the West Coast. The temperature outlook favored warmer-than-normal conditions across the northern and western U.S. with the highest probabilities from the Pacific Northwest to the northern Plains and in Alaska. Such conditions were also favored in Hawaii. The outlook also noted that the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys, the Mid-Atlantic region, and the U.S. Southeast had equal chances of either above-, below-, or near-average temperatures. The outlook did not delineate any areas likely to experience below-average conditions. The precipitation outlook noted an elevated probability of wetter-than-average conditions across the southern tier of the United States and along the eastern U.S. up to the Mid-Atlantic. Drier conditions were favored in parts of the northern Rockies and northern Plains, northern Ohio Valley, and Great Lakes regions. The drought outlook mentioned a high likelihood for drought conditions to persist across parts of the southwestern U.S., southern California, the central Great Basin, the central Rockies, the northern Plains, and parts of the interior Pacific Northwest. Drought conditions were favored to improve in the central Plains, the coastal Pacific Northwest, southern portions of Colorado and Utah, and in various areas in both Arizona and New Mexico.
Ice Age (franchise)
CEO of 20th Century Fox Stacey Snider announced that a television series based on "Ice Age" is currently being developed. With the upcoming acquisition by Disney, it is possible that it will appear on one of their platforms.
Vashon Glaciation
The Vashon Glaciation, Vashon Stadial or Vashon Stade is a local term for the most recent period of very cold climate in which during its peak, glaciers covered the entire Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca as well as present day Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and other surrounding areas in the western part of present day Washington (state) of the United States of America. This occurred during a cold period around the world known as the last glacial period. This was the most recent cold period of the Pleistocene Ice Age. The Pleistocene Glaciation is the ice age that the planet is currently in and has been in for the last 2.58 million years. It is the time period in which the arctic ice sheets have existed. The Pleistocene Ice Age is part of an even longer ice age called the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, which began 33.9 million years ago and is ongoing. It is the time period in which the Antarctic ice cap has existed.
Arctic cooperation and politics
Global warming has had a greater impact on summer sea ice in the Arctic than previously estimated. Based on the recent studies, the Arctic will be largely ice-free during the summer sometime between 2020 and 2050. One 2011 Cambridge University study predicted that the Arctic would be free of summer ice by 2015. No models predict that the winter sea ice will disappear during this century.
Ice age
Since today's Earth has a continent over the South Pole and an almost land-locked ocean over the North Pole, geologists believe that Earth will continue to experience glacial periods in the geologically near future.
Battlefield 2142
In the year 2106, a new ice age began. As the ice expanded, millions of people were all over the world were displaced, particularly in Russia and Japan. This, along with their increasing inability to find sufficient natural resources, the Pan Asian Coalition grows desperate. Meanwhile, the European Union is able to withstand the displacements and find sufficient resources, mostly from North Africa due to their relationship with the Union of African States (Africa remaining mostly ice-free). Seeing this, the PAC launches a full-scale invasion of Europe and North Africa in 2139, beginning the Cold War of the 22nd century, a war for the world's last remaining land and resources.
Arctic policy of the United States
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides Arctic information and a set of indicators describing the current state of the Arctic ecosystem. NOAA predicts a nearly ice-free summer in the Arctic ocean before 2050.
Nigel Calder
Calder said that climate change science has been invaded by sophistry about man-made global warming. As early as 1980, he predicted that by 2030 "the much-advertised heating of the earth by the man-made carbon-dioxide 'greenhouse' [will fail] to occur; instead, there [will be] renewed concern about cooling and an impending ice age".
Global cooling
J. Murray Mitchell showed as early as 1963 a multidecadal cooling since about 1940. At a conference on climate change held in Boulder, Colorado in 1965, evidence supporting Milankovitch cycles triggered speculation on how the calculated small changes in sunlight might somehow trigger ice ages. In 1966, Cesare Emiliani predicted that "a new glaciation will begin within a few thousand years." In his 1968 book "The Population Bomb", Paul R. Ehrlich wrote "The greenhouse effect is being enhanced now by the greatly increased level of carbon dioxide... [this] is being countered by low-level clouds generated by contrails, dust, and other contaminants... At the moment we cannot predict what the overall climatic results will be of our using the atmosphere as a garbage dump."
Ice Age: Collision Course
On the possibility of a potential sequel, in June 2016, Galen T. Chu, co-director of the film, stated that there were some ideas for the sixth installment. In July 2016, Bustle noted that the potential of "Ice Age 6" actually being produced was relatively high even though it could largely depend on the box office performance of the fifth film.
PopWrapped commented on the subject of a sequel in February 2017, pointing out the fifth film's poor reception and how the franchise was moving further into absurdity and further away from leaving any lasting emotional impact on the audience, and suggesting that the sixth film could "redeem" the franchise by going back to its roots and reintroducing the humans from the original film, particularly the little baby named Roshan, and thereby bring the audience to remember why they loved "Ice Age" so much in the first place, and maybe end the series on a high note.
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
In the early 2020s, the New Cold War will end when the economic strain and political pressure on Russia, coupled with Russia's declining population, and poor infrastructure, cause the federal government of Russia to completely collapse, much like the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Other former Soviet countries will fragment as well.
Ice cap climate
Ice cap climates have only existed in ice ages. There have been at least five such ice ages in the Earth's past. Outside these ages, the Earth seems to have been ice-free even in high latitudes. By the geologic definition, Earth is currently in an ice age, in that the planet has permanent ice caps. Factors that cause ice ages include changes to the atmosphere, the arrangement of continents, the energy received from the sun, volcanos, and meteor impacts.
Absolute Zero (film)
Back in Miami, he presents his findings to his co-workers and his boss. He claims that another polar shift is only a couple of hours away and the new ice age is inevitable. However, nobody believes him. According to the current theories, the shifting of the poles should last at least 200 years so the climate changes, if any, wouldn't appear overnight. David's one-time love Bryn (Erika Eleniak) supports his theory with numerous stories about the falling sun followed by a darkness and terrible cold.
Neoglaciation
The view that neoglaciation is ending in present times, is assumed by those who identify the most recent climate changes and global warming as the onset of a new period in Earth history, speculatively calling it the "Early anthropocene", as a coming geological age dominated by the effects of "Homo sapiens".
Arctic sea ice decline
In 2018, climate scientist Michael E. Mann explained that the west Antarctic ice sheet may lose twice as much ice by the end of the century as previously thought, which also doubles the projected rise in sea level from three feet to more than six feet.
Global cooling
The paper of Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton "Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages" qualified its predictions with the remark that "forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted... the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate".
Global issue
Future climate change and associated impacts will differ from region to region. Ongoing and anticipated effects include rising sea levels, changing precipitation, and expansion of deserts in the subtropics. Future warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost, and sea ice. Other likely changes include more frequent extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, heavy rainfall with floods, and heavy snowfall; ocean acidification; and massive extinctions of species due to shifting temperature regimes. Effects significant to humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the abandonment of populated areas due to rising sea levels. Because the climate system has a large "inertia" and greenhouse gases will remain in the atmosphere for a long time, many of these effects will persist for not only decades or centuries, but tens of thousands of years.
Ice age
The "traditional" Milankovitch explanation struggles to explain the dominance of the 100,000-year cycle over the last 8 cycles. Richard A. Muller, Gordon J. F. MacDonald, and others have pointed out that those calculations are for a two-dimensional orbit of Earth but the three-dimensional orbit also has a 100,000-year cycle of orbital inclination. They proposed that these variations in orbital inclination lead to variations in insolation, as the Earth moves in and out of known dust bands in the solar system. Although this is a different mechanism to the traditional view, the "predicted" periods over the last 400,000 years are nearly the same. The Muller and MacDonald theory, in turn, has been challenged by Jose Antonio Rial.
Ice age
At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (December 17, 2008), scientists detailed evidence in support of the controversial idea that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last 1,000 years. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming, possibly forestalling the onset of a new glacial age.
Global warming controversy
Following the (then) record low of the arctic sea ice extend in 2007, Mark Serreze, the director of US National Snow and Ice Data Center, stated "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate."
In 2012, during another record low, Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University predicted a possible final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months around 2016.
Themes in A Song of Ice and Fire
In the series the threat of a global climate change is ever present. There are no regular seasons that occur at expected intervals. Winter and the accompanying cold temperatures it brings may last for a number of years or even a decade or longer. During this time thousands if not millions may die from starvation or the ravages of war and violence that often coincide with mass starvation. The White Walkers or others represent the personification of this threat. Yet despite the nature of the threat as an existential danger to the very survival of the human race, many of the powerful in Westeros choose to deny its existence or ignore it. This is most prominently seen in the conflict between the Starks and the Lanisters that forms the basis for the story in ASOIAF. The Starks (along with their patronage of the Night's Watch) defend all of Westeros against the threat of winter. They acknowledge its inevitability and do everything in their power to prepare for and prevent the disasters that may come from a prolonged winter and open warfare with the White Walkers. Their attempts to warn others about the threat and rally the great houses to their cause is generally not successful however.
Late Cenozoic Ice Age
According to Blue Marble 3000 (a video by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences), the average global temperature around 19,000 BC (about 21,000 years ago) was 9.0 °C (48.2 °F). This is about 6.0 °C (10.8°F) colder than the 2013-2017 average.
Glacial period
Work by Berger and Loutre suggests that the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years. The amount of heat trapping gases emitted into Earth's Oceans and atmosphere will prevent the next glacial period (ice age), which otherwise would begin in around 50,000 years, and likely more glacial cycles.
James Lovelock
Writing in the British newspaper "The Independent" in January 2006, Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. He has been quoted in "The Guardian" that 80% of humans will perish by 2100 AD, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed, "[t]he people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain."
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
As an annual follow-on activity to the 2006 NOAA State of the Arctic report, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's "Arctic Report Card" presents annually updated, peer-reviewed information on recent observations of environmental conditions in the Arctic relative to historical records. The conclusion for 2010 is that a return to previous Arctic conditions is unlikely. Record temperatures across Canadian Arctic and Greenland, a reduced summer sea ice cover, record snow cover decreases and links to some Northern Hemisphere weather support this conclusion.
Philip K. Chapman
On 23 April 2008, Dr Chapman authored an op-ed in The Australian newspaper, noting a new ice age will eventually occur, that based on current low solar activity it might even be imminent, and "It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.". A response by IPCC affiliated meteorologist Dr. David Karoly was published a few days later.
Zbigniew Jaworowski
Stephen Schneider said of him that "Jaworowski is perhaps even more contrarian than most, claiming that he can prove the climate is going to get colder through his work excavating glaciers on six different continents, which he says indicates what we should really be worrying about is 'The approaching new Ice Age...'." Jaworowski wrote "The current sunspot cycle is weaker than the preceding cycles, and the next two cycles will be even weaker. Bashkirtsev and Mishnich (2003) expect that the minimum of the secular cycle of solar activity will occur between 2021 and 2026, which will result in the minimum global temperature of the surface air. The shift from warm to cool climate might have already started.".
Snowpiercer
In 2014, an attempt to counteract global warming through climate engineering backfires catastrophically, causing an ice age and extinguishing nearly all life. The only human survivors are on the "Snowpiercer" a massive train traveling on a circumnavigational track created by the transportation magnate and inventor, Wilford. By 2031, elites inhabit the extravagant front cars while the "scum" inhabit the tail in squalid and brutal conditions. Under watch by Wilford's guards, they are brought only gelatinous protein bars to eat.
Nicola Scafetta
In a 2011 article published in "The Open Atmospheric Science Journal" ecologist Craig Loehle of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (a forest industry institution) and Scafetta forecast that the world climate "may remain approximately steady until 2030-2040, and may at most warm 0.5-1.0°C by 2100 at the estimated 0.66°C/century anthropogenic warming rate".
Arctic shipping routes
Various projections indicate that the ice floe will greatly diminish in the future, and might even disappear by the end of the century. The depletion of the arctic ice is already visible. On average over a year, the ice floe has diminished by 4.3% every ten years. However, this reduction is not uniform over the entire year. Indeed, if we observe only the month of September, the ice floe has diminished by 10.7% every ten years, compared to only 2.8% in March. Projection models of the evolution of the arctic ice floe are based on the last 30 years. These projections mainly use circulation models of ocean and atmospheric currents, such as NEMO, the OGCM and the CMIP. They also take into account the evolution of greenhouse gases, such as CO_2.
Physical impacts of climate change
A paper published in 2008 by a group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin led by Anders Carlson used the deglaciation of North America at 9000 years before present as an analogue to predict sea level rise of 1.3 meters in the next century, which is also much higher than the IPCC projections. However, models of glacial flow in the smaller present-day ice sheets show that a probable maximum value for sea level rise in the next century is 80 centimeters, based on limitations on how quickly ice can flow below the [[equilibrium line altitude]] and to the sea.
Ice age
The Snowball Earth hypothesis maintains that the severe freezing in the late Proterozoic was ended by an increase in levels in the atmosphere, mainly from volcanoes, and some supporters of Snowball Earth argue that it was caused in the first place by a reduction in atmospheric . The hypothesis also warns of future Snowball Earths.
Global cooling
In 1977, a popular book on the topic was published, called "The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age".
There were also a US TV show narrated by Leonard Nimoy in the 1977 "In Search of... (TV series)", episode 27, season 2, titled, "The Coming Ice Age: An inquiry into whether the dramatic weather changes in America's northern states mean that a new ice age is approaching."
Vladimir Paar
Paar is a global warming skeptic and is an advocate of a new ice age hypothesis. He argues that the rise of carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is the effect - rather than the cause - of global climate change, and that the true cause lies in the change of Earth's orbit due to gravitational pull of Jupiter and other planets of the Solar System. Paar believes that the evidence against anthropogenic global warming is being deliberately suppressed.
Late Cenozoic Ice Age
Being in an interglacial, there is less ice than there was during the last glacial period. However, the last glacial period was just one part of the ice age that still continues today. Even though Earth is in an interglacial, there is still more ice than times outside of ice ages. There are also currently ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, which means that there is more ice on Earth than there was during the first 31 million years of the Late Cenozoic Ice Age. During that time, only the Antarctic ice sheets existed. Currently (as of 2012), about 3.1% of Earth's surface and 10.7% of the land area is covered in year-round ice according to the USGS. The current sea level (as of 2009) is 70 meters (230 feet) lower than it would be without the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.