Why Global Warming will cause Ice Age?

Question

I don't get it, why getting hotter due to global warming, will make it ice age as scentitist suggest? is it more make sense turn to dessert etc..

Answer 1

Jaroo's answer is pretty spot on. There is the danger of the ice in Greenland melting and of the cold water entering the Atlantic cooling it down to that point that the warmer currents stop flowing. I'm not sure about the details but this has caused an ice age in the past.

There is also another theory used by scientists against global warming. They claim that global warming is just a natural occurence that happens between ice ages. The world cools down causing an ice age and then warms up again before cooling down again.

This is unlikely though as carbon emissions are playing a large part now and they havent been a factor in the past.

Answer 2

something about some channel in the ocean over by the UK will stop moving and then the lack of movement will make everything cold? lol I got a C in weather and climate....I blame my professor for that ding on my GPA. Good luck finding a better answer and don't worry about climate change too much. Just be nice to the environment like we were taught in kinder garden!

Answer 3

The answers so far have touched upon it. Essentially what could happen (no one really knows for sure) is an influx of cold fresh water from melting ice would interfere with a process known as thermohaline circulation which controls how currents flow based on their temperature and salt content. This would then interfere with the gulf stream which supplies warm ocean water to Northern latitudes, keeping certain areas relatively warm. Without it the Northern ice sheets expand to cover most of Northern Europe and significant parts of North America.

The expansion of the ice sheets would interfere with another concept known as albedo (It is a measure of the reflectivity of a surface to radiation from the sun). Ice has a very high albedo so a large increase in the amount of ice in the Northern hemisphere would start a feedback mechanism where the reflectivity would reduce the amount of energy which would enter the earth's climate system from the sun. This in turn would reduce temperatures, resulting in more ice which would increase albedo, lower the available energy and reduce the temperatures and so on. This process would result in an ice age.

Bear in mind that this process is only a theory.

I hope this helps, it's quite difficult to explain purely through text. I've put some links about thermohaline circulation, the gulf stream and about albedo in the sources box. They're only from wikipedia but explain quite well.