What is most likely to cause the next mini ice age?

Question

The last mini ice (called the little ice age), 1650 - 1850, was preceded by a warming period. The tempurature during this warming spell was similar to the modern day climate. scientists believe that there were most likely four reasons for the little ice age. These were:

Answer 1

As with the last mini ice age:  Too few sunspots (aka the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age).

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroo...

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/Sunspo...

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf051/s...

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronom...

The sunspot activity over the last Century has been well above average, coinciding with an increase in global temperature.  Scientists have yet to explain the connection, though many hypothesis exist.  

http://www.lund.irf.se/HeliosHome/solara...

Until scientists can show how CO2 levels on Earth affect solar cycles, I'll continue to believe global warming is a result of the sun's variability.

Answer 2

Climate is so complex that no one feature is ever in play at any one time.  Still, for the table to tilt that much, it is a good bet that one single factor was way outside the normal.

Solar activity - This is not likely to be the main factor.  There have been plenty of other periods where solar activity was at a minimum, and global temperature was almost unchanged.  

Volcanic activity - It would have to be a series of eruptions, since no single event would be big enough.  Mt Pinatubo in 1991 and agian 1994, for example, put over a billions metric tons of ash into the air, but changed global temperatures by less than a half a degree.  

The Permian-Triassic extinction was most likely caused by a series of eruptions, several thousand times bigger than Pinatubo.  This event was much larger than the event that wiped out the dinosaurs, but may have taken anywhere from five thousand to five million years.  

Ocean Conveyor Shutdown - This is more likely to be a symptom than a cause.  We have added so much fresh water to the system that the conveyor is slowing.  By itself, this will not heat or cool the planet by much, but it would lower the oxygen level in the ocean.  Oddly, this could wipe out 75% to 95% of the life on the planet, without changing the temperature by more than a degree or two.

Human activity - The carbon that we are adding to the atmosphere is offsetting the ash to some extent.  As a general rule, though, both factors will give us hotter summers and colder winters.  This hurts our food supply a great deal, but the danger of glaciers is pretty slight.

Methane Hydrate Gasification - Another profound risk, but mostly a risk of warming, and mostly near the equator.

Impact event - Don't rule it out.  If you vaporize a chunk of rock the size of Mt. Everest, and set an entire continent on fire, it will blot out the sun for several years.  Temperatures will drop by 20 to 30 degrees all over the world.  By the time the plant life starts to recover, the human race might be long gone.

On the bright side, the sunsets will be amazing.

Answer 3

I think you answered your own question.

Answer 4

Ever seen the film The Day After Tomorrow?

Answer 5

My wife's temper, that's what,,

Answer 6

No, it wont coz;

-were there as many cars as now?

-factories?

-were the Poles as big as the present ones?

-was recycling already started back there?

-were/was......

Answer 7

id say is gotta be ya boy leroy cuz im so mutha f#(kin icyyyyy.

Answer 8

the sun has been quiet for quite a while and continues to be, many solar scientists believe we're heading for another little ice age and the 2-3 years will tell us which way we're going

Answer 9

The last cold front, prior to the short European glaciation event, occurred around 13,000 years ago, around 1000 years before the official Pleisto-Holocene extinction event. During this time, the predominant hominid culture, the Clovis people, were totally wiped out, which is odd considering their relative adaptational abilitilities. Oddly, their disappearance coincides with a bizarre event that sent the world from a very brief warm interglacial period back into an even more fleeting period of intense cold, known as the Younger Dryas, which could have been prompted by the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet. As the sheet retreated, meltwater overflowed out of a massive glacial lake in the heart of North America known as Lake Agassiz and into the Mississippi River, eventually draining into the Gulf of Mexico.  From isotopic dating of foraminifera, scientists have observed a massive change in the amount of runoff flowing into the Gulf of Mexico during the Younger Dryas. This evidence suggests to us that glaciers had retreated far enough into Canada to open a series of channels that diverted the water away from the Mississippi river and into the Saint Lawrence, causing it to drain out into the North Atlantic. For those of you who don't know, ocean salinity is driven by fresh water draining into the saltier ocean, and that a change in salinity levels disrupts the ocean currents, which in turn disrupts Earth’s climate. This "conveyor belt" is called the Thermohaline cycle. Such a diversion from the Gulf of Mexico to the Hudson Bay would have seriously disrupted the thermohaline cycle, causing the world to plunge into another cold spell. As the earth grew colder, the ice began to once again advance and only after covering up the Saint Lawrence channels was the salinity in the ocean level restored.

A more controversial theory suggests that a meteor explosion above the Laurentide ice sheet may have been responsible for the extinction of various megafauna such as the wooly mammoth and the saber-tooth cat and in particular the Clovis culture around the time of the Younger Dryas, perhaps even sparking the diversion of meltwater towards the Saint Lawrence. The first evidence of this was discovered in a layer of iridium—an element rare on Earth but common in meteorites—that was unearthed in over 20 Clovis sites across North America. When a meteor detonates it creates an ridiculous amount of pressure, a lot of which is directed below the impact zone. Such highly concentrated pressure creates microscopic nanodiamonds common to impact zones and also lays down highly heat-metamorphosed magnetic, carbon, and glass spherules.  Oddly enough, eight sights dated from 35,000 years ago in Alaska and Siberia bear similar microscopic spherules—in mammoth and bison fossils.  In certain cases, bone had healed over the spherules, evidence that the animal had survived. Even more remarkable is the fact that exploded shards are on one side of the fossils, suggesting the explosion occurred in a certain direction. Researchers propose that, like other Pleistocene fossils frequently found poking out from the permafrost layer by crazy old Russian men today, the bones could have been exposed on the surface at the time an the impact 12,900 years ago.  In the case of the Clovis sites, the iridium layer is followed by a thick black layer of charcoal, which scientists suggest is evidence of the raging forest fires that could have come from the heat of the blast.



Naysayers dispute this evidence, suggesting other means for the metallic spherules and sediment found at the layer to have been deposited. Such metallic spherules routinely fall from space, which could have contributed to the abundance in the Younger-Dryas, or YD, layer. Skeptics also attacked the proof of nanodiamonds, accusing the researchers of having little proof of this in their official report, instead citing evidence only in passing. Even the iridium layer itself is under scrutiny, as impact specialists who first analyzed the sediment have spoken up to say that the team misconstrued their evidence, as they report finding only insignificant amounts of iridium sent to them by the research team.  Needless to say, the origin of the Younger-Dryas event that incited the mysterious disappearance of the Clovis people is still under hot debate.

In short, the most likely case could be a disruption of the thermohaline cycle as our atmosphere heats up. When oceanic glacial ice melts, there is little change to the ocean height OR salinity. On the other hand, when there is significant greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap solar energy, the earth heats up and glacial melt. The real problem comes from when these terrestrial glaciers melt INTO the ocean, causing an intense amount of freshwater to disrupt the normally hypersaline northern waters, thus messing up the entire thermohaline cycle and causing the earth to spin towards a small cold glacial event.

On a much larger cosmic scale, the snowy winters and abnormally chilly warmer months required for glacial growth are primarily driven by a more extensive orbital force known as a Milankovitch cycle.  This cycle takes into account factors such as:  the shape of Earth’s orbit around the sun, either circular or elliptical (known as Earth’s eccentricity) which fully changes shape every 100,000 years on average; the tilt of Earth’s axis, which fluctuates between 21.5 to 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years ; and Earth’s precession, which refers to the way the planet wobbles and spins like a top. As the Earth’s eccentricity changes to one of a more circular nature, it is situated relatively closer to the sun, which means that a considerably larger amount of the sun’s radiation interact with Earth, making it significantly warmer. Glacial cycles, then, are more common when the Earth remains in an elliptical orbit.

There you go, folks. Pick your poison.

Answer 10

I don't think there will be any forthcoming ice age. We are having a global warming now.

Answer 11

Scientists have proved that another holocaust will trigger off the worst ice age to date.

Answer 12

nukes are good for ice ages, a couple of nukes would put enough c**p in the air to blanket the sky and turn the earth into a toxic snowball.

Answer 13

when it will come...ull get the cause. so chill!