New study shows:

Next global ice age coming in 10,000 years

(Bild: UC Santa Barbara/Matt Perko)

A new study shows that the recurring ice age cycles are apparently associated with changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. According to the study, the planet would be heading towards another global ice age in around 10,000 years. But greenhouse gas emissions could change the timing ...

Around 2.5 million years ago, our planet entered an era of successive ice ages and warm phases. The last major glaciation ended around 11,700 years ago. The new analysis now suggests that the next ice age could begin in around 10,000 years.

The prediction is based on a new interpretation of small changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun: "These lead to massive climate changes over thousands of years," reports a team of researchers including scientists led by Stephen Barker from Cardiff University and Lorraine Lisiecki from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara).

New insights into the climate system
The study tracks the natural climate cycles of our planet over a million years and provides new insights into the Earth's dynamic climate system. Climate changes over a period of one million years were taken into account in the analyses. The researchers documented both the expansion of the continental ice sheets in the northern hemisphere and the temperature of the deep sea.

"These changes could be linked to cyclical variations in the shape of the Earth's orbit, its wobbling motion and the tilt angle of the Earth's axis," according to the UC Santa Barbara website.

Predictable pattern discovered
"Over the last million years, we have found a predictable pattern for when the Earth's climate changes between ice ages and mild warm periods like today - the so-called interglacial periods," the geoscientist Lisiecki is quoted as saying. According to this, one type of change in the Earth's orbit was responsible for the end of the ice ages, while another was associated with their return.

Predictions of a link between the Earth's orbit and the fluctuations between ice ages and interglacial periods have been around for over a century, but were not confirmed by real data until the mid-1970s.

Since then, scientists have struggled to determine exactly which orbital parameter is most important for the start and end of ice ages, as it is difficult to date climatic changes so far into the past.

Currently in the middle of an interglacial period
The research team has now discovered that every glaciation in the last 900,000 years has followed a predictable pattern. According to the scientists, this natural pattern - without taking human greenhouse gas emissions into account - indicates that we are currently in the middle of a stable interglacial period and that the next ice age will begin in around 10,000 years.