{"id":647625,"date":"2026-11-01T07:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T07:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/647625\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T07:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T07:36:15","slug":"did-humans-accidentally-prevent-the-next-ice-age-a-new-study-makes-the-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/647625\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Humans Accidentally Prevent the Next Ice Age? A New Study Makes the Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>The Barnes Ice Cap on Canada\u2019s Baffin Island, photographed on July 12, 2026. Blue meltwater ponds and an extensive network of channels are visible across the ice surface. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory\/Lauren Dauphin.<\/p>\n

On the remote plateau of Baffin Island in Canada\u2019s Nunavut territory, the retreating edge of the Barnes Ice Cap is exposing long-dead mosses that have not seen sunlight since the Roman Empire. For 2,000 years, this Delaware-sized dome of ice slowly expanded across the tundra, entombing every plant in its path. Then, around 1960, the ice abruptly reversed course.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t some ordinary local melting. According to a new study published in the journal Science<\/a>, the two-millennia expansion of the Barnes Ice Cap marked the birth of Earth\u2019s next ice age \u2014 and human-driven greenhouse gas emissions terminated it in its infancy. By burning fossil fuels, humanity has overpowered the subtle planetary cycles that governed global climate for the past 2.6 million years, the scientists argue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just getting started, everything was normal, the next glaciation was about to happen \u2014 and yet it stopped,\u201d Nicol\u00e1s Young, the study\u2019s lead author and a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University\u2019s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told CNN<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very powerful example of how we have jolted the system.\u201d <\/p>\n

Reading the Clues Under the Ice<\/p>\n

\"Timeline<\/a><\/p>\n

Around 20,000 years ago, the colossal Laurentide Ice Sheet covered nearly 30 percent of North America, stretching from the Arctic Circle to Illinois in layers more than two miles thick. Today, the Barnes Ice Cap is the last surviving remnant of this ancient giant. Resting on low-elevation bedrock roughly 500 meters above sea level, the 700-meter-thick dome serves as the historical ground zero for North American glaciation.<\/p>\n

How do researchers track the growth of an ice sheet when advancing glaciers normally pulverize the landscape beneath them? Unlike most glaciers that slide across the ground and crush everything underneath, the Barnes Ice Cap is frozen solid to its underlying bedrock.<\/p>\n

After the ancient ice sheet shrank during the current warm period \u2014 the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago \u2014 \u201cmosses eventually colonized this newly exposed land,\u201d Dr. Young told Wired<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese mosses are living there, and things are normal \u2014 then, eventually, the ice cap starts to re-expand. The ice covers the moss and kills it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Because the ice does not slide, it acts as a deep freezer rather than a bulldozer, preserving the delicate plants in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can actually track the expansion of the ice margin as it\u2019s progressively covering mosses and killing (them),\u201d Dr. Young said.<\/p>\n

An Ice Cap Timeline<\/p>\n

To reconstruct the ice cap\u2019s timeline, Dr. Young\u2019s team pieced together evidence from two distinct geological clocks. First, they measured cosmic ray exposure by analyzing a rare, radioactive form of beryllium trapped in 35 bedrock and boulder samples. Because this isotope accumulates only while rock lies exposed to the open sky, it revealed that the ancient ice sheet shrank to its smallest footprint about 3,560 years ago. <\/p>\n

Then, as modern warming drove the ice edge back between 200 and 800 meters from 1960 to 2022, the researchers gathered 88 samples of newly uncovered dead vegetation to pinpoint its subsequent advance. Radiocarbon dating of these plant \u201ckill dates\u201d revealed that the ice began re-expanding roughly 2,000 years ago in response to declining summer sunlight across the Northern Hemisphere, culminating in a major growth pulse during the exceptionally chilly summers between 1780 and 1880.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur approach helped us see the first steps of ice-sheet growth preserved in the landscape. It gave us a rare opportunity to understand how re-glaciation begins and how the Laurentide Ice Sheet re-forms,\u201d study co-author Joerg Schaefer, a geochemist at Columbia University, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

A Debate Over Planetary Timelines<\/p>\n

\"Graph<\/a><\/p>\n

By 1960, atmospheric greenhouse gases had risen by roughly 62 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent above preindustrial levels (and climbed another 138 parts per million by 2024). The resulting warming turned the ice cap\u2019s mass balance negative, causing rapid Baffin Island glacier loss<\/a> and stripping the Barnes Ice Cap of its snow-accumulation zone entirely since 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that it\u2019s no coincidence that that\u2019s at the same time as we\u2019ve pumped an extraordinary amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,\u201d Dr. Young said, noting that climate pollution has \u201cessentially overpowered\u201d the natural orbital mechanisms that \u201cwant to make that region cool.\u201d <\/p>\n

Outside experts say the study\u2019s methods are impressive. Meredith Kelly, an earth sciences professor at Dartmouth College, noted that the team used \u201cnovel radiocarbon dating of plants\u201d to map the ice, adding that comparing these findings with glaciers advancing in other regions would clarify the broader mechanisms at play.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Andrey Ganopolski, a physicist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research whose 2016 Nature<\/a> study concluded that human emissions will delay the next ice age by 50,000 years<\/a>, argued that the Barnes Ice Cap growth \u201cis insufficient to support the conclusion that a new glacial cycle had already begun and was subsequently aborted,\u201d according to CNN. <\/p>\n

Traditional climate models define an ice age only after massive ice sheets lock up several meters of global sea level. Dr. Young\u2019s team counters that waiting for colossal ice sheets misses the actual moment of birth.<\/p>\n

Still, because ice ages take millennia to develop, Dr. Young cautioned against claiming global warming \u201csaved humanity from an ice age.\u201d Instead, we have entered uncharted territory, where \u201cwe\u2019ve probably put off any chance of any other future glaciation for a very, very long time.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Earth scientist Shaun Marcott wrote in an accompanying Science perspective article<\/a>: \u201cWill another ice age ever transpire? The next glacial inception is generally considered unlikely to occur in the next predicted cycle, but ultimately how many skipped glacial cycles occur is left to choices made by humanity and tied to the future carbon emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n


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