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TEMPERATURE CHANGES ON EARTH
DURING
THE
PAST 18,000 YEARS FROM 2005 AD
[Contacts] NOTE: Data obtained from Internet sources and
checked with various
authors for relative accuracy as of 2020 CLICK All
To Enlarge |
DATE APROXIMATIONS DISCUSSION REFERENCES
80,000 B.C. --------- 80-40,000 B.C. ---- 40,000 B.C. --------- 39,000 B.C. -------- 28,000 B.C. --------- 16,000 B.C. --------- 12,000 B.C. --------- 10,000 B.C. --------- 9,000
B.C. --------- 8,000 B.C. ---------
5,500 - 6,000 B.C.-- 6,000-3,500 B.C.---- 4,000 B.C. ----------- 1,700 B.C. ----------- 1,420
B.C. ----------- 1,290 1,180 B.C. -- 1,100 B.C. --------
597 A.D. ---------- 600-700 A.D. -----
635 A.D. ---------- c 950-1250
A.D.
---- c 1360-1860
A.D.
---- 1870 2020 --- |
Modern humans appear in southern Africa (judged from jewelry
production) Several catastrophic climatic changes decimate human population Small group of modern humans cross Red
Sea to Yemen Artistic cave paintings appear at diverse locations Small carvings of human females appear from Europe through Asia The climate begins to warm Flooding over vast areas of the earth intensifies Development of reliable ocean navigation opened up the world around Mini Ice Age lasts a few
hundred years. Seafarers from Morocco
and northern Spain explore entire west coast of Europe. Caucasian race appears in Libya Ice Age mega fauna goes
extinct. Societies become
more centrally directed. Specialized trades expand, longevity increases. Ireland to Scandinavia colonized. Language becomes more organized and developed (See Linguistics) Migrations out of North Africa to points east and north (as desert
expands) The Holocene Maximum warm
period Peteroborough, Canada petroglyphs carved (See Bronze Age) Isle of Thera volcano erupts, devastating Crete & other areas Major attacks by Sea Peoples on Egypt (attempt
to reestablish Goddess religion) Hebrews leave Egypt Benedictine clerics expand Christian conversion activity in Europe Horsecreek Petroglyph carved in
West Virginia ? (See Horsecreek) Roman Catholic sponsored Invention of modern European languages
expanded Medieval Warm Period Little Ice Age Industrial Age , Global Warming |
The Earth has been ice-free (even
at the poles) for most of its history.
However, these iceless periods have been interrupted by several major
glaciations (called Glacial Epochs)
and we are in one now in the 21st Century. Each glacial epoch consists
of many advances and retreats of ice fields. These ice fields tend to
wax and wane in about 100,000, 41,000 and 21,000 year cycles. Each
advance of ice has been referred to as an "Ice Age" but it is
important to realize that these multiple events are just variations of the
same glacial epoch. The retreat of ice during a glacial epoch is called
an Inter-Glacial Period and this is our present climate system. The existing Plio-Pleistocene
Glacial Epoch began about 3.2 million years ago and is
probably linked to the tectonic construction of the Isthmus of Panama which
prevented the circulation of Atlantic and Pacific waters and eventually triggered
a slow sequence of events that finally led to cooling of the atmosphere and
the formation of new ice fields by about 2.5 million years ago. Thus far, the Earth has had around
15 to 20 individual major advances and subsequent retreats of the ice field
in our current Glacial Epoch. The last major
advance of glacial ice peaked about 18,000 years ago and since that time the
ice has generally been retreating although with some short-term interruptions
(See Graph above).
What we are presently experiencing in Greenland and other continents
is a rapid melting of surrounding sea ice by rising ocean temperatures and a
widening of the Gulf Stream. Greenland's continental glaciers are also
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