[Rockhounds] Scientists match Earth's ice age cycles with orbital shifts

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Beginning around 2.5 million years ago, Earth entered an era marked by
successive ice ages and interglacial periods, emerging from the last
glaciation around 11,700 years ago. A new analysis suggests the onset of
the next ice age could be expected in 10,000 years' time.

The findings are published
<https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp3491> in the journal
*Science*.

An international team, including researchers from UC Santa Barbara, made
their prediction based on a new interpretation of the small changes in
Earth's orbit of the sun, which lead to massive shifts in the planet's
climate over periods of thousands of years. The study tracks the natural
cycles of the planet's climate over a period of a million years. Their
findings offer new insights into Earth's dynamic climate system and
represent a step-change in understanding the planet's glacial cycles.

The team examined a million-year record of climate change, which documents
changes in the size of land-based ice sheets across the Northern hemisphere
together with the temperature of the deep ocean. They were able to match
these changes with small cyclical variations in the shape of Earth's orbit
of the sun, its wobble, and the angle at which its axis is tilted.

https://phys.org/news/2025-02-scientists-earth-ice-age-orbital.html