The Great Ice Age Climate Change and Life

About this book

Documents and explains the natural, climatic and ecological changes that have occurred during the past 2.6 million years, demonstrating the connections between the components of the earth's climate system and showing how the evidence for such change is obtained.

Contents

Preface; Part 1 - Cycles of Climactic Change - Evidence and Explanations; 1.The Great Ice Age; Introduction; Climatic detective work; A global perspective; Colder and drier, warmer and wetter; Summary; Further reading; 2. Understanding Present and Past Climates; Introduction; Moving heat around; Forcing fictions and feedbacks; The evidence; Proxy data; The importance of time; The problem of resolution; Tine series; Understanding climate change; Summary; Further reading; 3. Understanding the Cryosphere; Introduction; How ice sheets work; Accumulation and ablation; Glaciation and climate; How glaciers move; Limits to ice sheet expansion; How do ice sheets get strated? The Milankovich theory of ice ages; Summary; Further reading; 4. The Deep Sea Record; Introduction; Deep sea sediments; Oxygen isotope studies; Global changes of sea-level; Oxygen isotope stages; Post-Cretaceous cooling; Summary; Futher reading; 5. Revealing the Milankovich Pacemaker; Introduction; The deep-sea oxygen isotope record; Revealing the pacemaker; Oxygen isotope time stratigraphy; The future? Cave depositis; Introduction; The Devil's Hole record; A world without Milankovich? Dust, monsoons and Milankovich; Introduction; Chinese loss deposits; Monsoons and Milankovich; The record in ice sheets; Introduction; Isotopes and ice; The Vostock record; Dust - The key to calibrating the age of the Vostock ice cores; Summary; Further reading; 6. Evidence for Rapid Climate Change; Introduction; North Atlantic iceberg armadas; Rapid eustratic sea-level changes; Greenland ice cores; Introduction; Numerous interstadials; Methane; The present and penultimate interglacials compared; Dust records and the annual to millennial scale; Millennial scale events in the NE Pacific; Summary; Further reading; 7. Explanations; Introduction; Post-Cretaceous cooling; Introduction; Magmatic processes; Continental drift and oceanic gateways; Tectonic uplift; Over the threshold; The Mid-Pleistocene revolution; Introduction; Ice sheet models; The change from 40 ka to 100 ka cyclicity; A multiple-state climate model; Millennial-scale climate and reorganisations of ocean circulation; Thermohaline seesaws; A role for the tropical Pacific? What next - when will the present interglacial end? Introduction; The length of past interglacials - a guide to the future? How might the present interglacial end? Will greenhouse gas buildup postpone the inevitable? Summary; Further reading; Human Origins, Evolution and Environmental Change; 8. Climate Change and Life on Land; Introduction; Plants and climate change; Spores and Pollen; Interpreting pollen diagrams; Spreading vegetation; Today's missing biome - glacial tundra; Insect as climate indicators; Climate change at lower latitudes; The diversity of tropical forests; Statis and co-evolving niches and species; Diversity from stress - the refugia view; Changes in Andean vegetation belts; Climate change in lowland South America; Tropical forest in Africa; Why not so d

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