Description

This book provides a detailed review of terminations of ice ages, including a very attractive theory based on dust deposits on ice sheets.

It is not so long ago (a mere 17,000 years – a blink in geologic time) that vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere were covered with ice sheets up to two miles thick, lowering the oceans by more than 120 m. By 11,000 years ago, most of the ice was gone.

Evidence from polar ice cores and ocean sediments show that Ice Ages were persistent and recurrent over the past 800,000 years. The data suggests that Ice Ages were the normal state, and were temporarily interrupted by interglacial warm periods about nine times during this period.

Quasi-periodic variations in the Earth cause the solar input to high northern latitudes to vary with time over thousands of years. The widely accepted Milankovitch theory implies that the interglacial warm periods are associated with high solar input to high northern latitudes. However, many periods of high solar input to high northern latitudes occur during Ice Ages while the ice sheets remain.

The data also indicates that Ice Ages will persist regardless of solar input to high northern latitudes, until several conditions are met that are necessary to generate a termination of an Ice Age. An Ice Age will not terminate until it has been maturing for many tens of thousands of years leading to a reduction of the atmospheric CO2 concentration to less than 200 ppm. At that point, CO2 starvation coupled with lower temperatures will cause desertification of marginal regions, leading to the generation of large quantities of dust. High winds transfer this dust to the ice sheets greatly increasing their solar absorptivity, and at the next up-lobe in the solar input to high northern latitudes, solar power melts the ice sheets over about a 6,000-year interval.

A warm interglacial period follows, during which dust levels drop remarkably. Slowly but surely, ice begins accumulating again at high northern latitudes and an incipient new Ice Age begins.

This third edition presents data and models to support this theory.

Langue

en

Version

Couverture rigide

Date de sortie initiale

29 avril 2019

Nombre de pages

346

Illustrations

Non

Personnes impliquées

Auteur principal

Donald Rapp

Deuxième auteur

Rapp

Editeur principal

Springer

Informations sur le fabricant

Nom du fabricant

Springer Nature Customer Service Center GmbH

Adresse du fabricant

Europaplatz 3 | 69115| Heidelberg| DE

Adresse électronique du fabricant

ProductSafety@springernature.com

Informations sur le fabricant

Les informations du fabricant ne sont actuellement pas disponibles

Autres spécifications

Hauteur de l’emballage

240 mm

Largeur d’emballage

168 mm

Largeur du produit

168 mm

Livre d‘étude

Non

Longueur d’emballage

240 mm

Longueur du produit

240 mm

Poids de l’emballage

800 g

Police de caractères extra large

Non

Édition

3

EAN

EAN

9783030104658

Sécurité des produits

Opérateur économique responsable dans l’UE

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Catégories

Science et nature

Terre et environnement

Astronomie

Sciences de la terre

Mer et eaux intérieures

Météo et climat

Livres

Livre, ebook ou livre audio ?

Livre

Disponibilité

Disponible à l’adresse suivante

Langue

Anglais

Type de livre

Hardcover