What mechanism caused the quaternary ice age? what caused it to end & global warming to begin approx13000 bc?

Question

how long is the average interglacial period between ice ages?

Answer 1

It's really important not to get the glacial cycle mixed up with Global Warming.  It confuses the children.

Answer 2

You really should give this one to Jim z. He took the words right out of my mouth.

Answer 3

I thought it was National Geographic Channel, They said it was an asteroid or meteorite.  The ice sheet absorbed the impact so there is no crater and the melt sent lots of fresh water to the North Atlantic stopping the flow of water in the oceans around the globe.

Answer 4

The prevailing theory is varying solar radiation due to orbital changes called "Milankovic cycles".  The main cycle takes about 100,000 years.

How do we know that's not what's going on now?  Simple, we measure the Sun.  Solar radiation has been decreasing while temperatures are increasing.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

Answer 5

oh i just seen something on that on the history channel i believe it was volcano ash

Answer 6

We are currently in an ice age.  There are periods of glaciation approximately every 100,000 years.   We are currently in an interglacial period.  The last period of glaciation was approximately 10,000 years ago.  About 3 million years ago, several events happened that triggered the current ice age.  The continents moved toward the poles creating places where ice accumulated.  The Isthmus of Panama formed.  The Indian subcontinent crashed into Asia forming the Himalaya.   The Indonesian Archipelago formed.  The changed the ocean currents and weather patterns.  There is a cycle of the Earths rotational axis and orbit around the sun known as the Milankovitch cycle.  This results in the the periodic cycles of the ice ages.  Bob, the next answerer pretends that we know that is not what is happening now.   He obviously is not a geologist to make such an assertion.  Our present weather pattern fits nicely with the past and there is very little reason to believe that human activity has  caused or will cause significant harmful warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitc...