Cool Ice Age Facts

1. Ice Age is not a quick event. It is actually a very long term phenomenon which lasts for several million years.

2. During the Ice Age, there is a gradual temperature drop. Both atmospheric as well as surface temperatures drop gradually.

3. During Ice Age, the gradual temperature drop leads to gradual expansion of the alpine glaciers. At the same time, ice sheets that cover the polar regions as well as several areas of different continents also gradually expand.

4. A single Ice Age can last for hundreds of millions of years. However, within a single Ice Age are two different phases that can happen alternately multiple times. These two phases are known as ‘glacials’ and ‘interglacials’.

5. Glacials are often referred to as by the names glaciations or glacial periods. These are actually times when climate becomes very cold.

6. Interestingly, we prefer calling glacials or glaciations or glacial periods as Ice Age but that’s not true. Glacials are not Ice Ages. They are rather phases of Ice Ages.

7. Interglacials on the other hand are intermediate periods in an Ice Age in when climate remains warm.

8. If at all, Ice Age is to be defined, glaciology says that as long as the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere remains blanketed by extensive ice sheets, it is an Ice Age.

9. In the times we are living in, the glaciological definitions holds true and hence, we are actually experiencing an Ice Age. Though we are in an Ice Age, we are not experiencing cold climate because we are in an interglacial phase.

10. The interglacial period that we are living in has a name. Well, we humans gave this name just for the sake of record keeping. This interglacial phase in which we are living is known as Holocene.

11. The Holocene is a part of the Ice Age that started some 2.6 million years ago (mya). That’s the time of late Pleistocene Epoch.