Studies of dynamic past Ice Age may help prepare society for future changes

Resolving the Late Paleozoic Ice Age in Time and Space. Click here for more information.

Boulder, CO, USA – This new Special Paper from the Geological Society of America brings together a wealth of recent work to understand the longest icehouse period in Phanerozoic Earth history, the late Paleozoic ice age. A better understanding of glaciation time frames and climate fluctuation rates during this ice age may help society prepare for a future Earth with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, rising global temperatures, rising sea levels, and melting polar ice and glaciers.

"Society stands to gain significantly from improved understanding of the late Paleozoic ice age," says lead editor Christopher Fielding of the University of Nebraska. The late Paleozoic ice age was a crucial epoch in Earth's history, representing the last time prior to the Cenozoic icehouse that Earth experienced a protracted, long-lived cold climate regime, and the only time since the advent of land plants that Earth both entered and exited a long-lived icehouse state.