Global warming may have halted an emerging ice age, study suggests

AI Summary

A study suggests that remnants of an Arctic ice sheet began growing about 2,000 years ago, indicating the start of a new glacial period. Rising summer temperatures by the 1960s reversed that growth, and the authors propose that global warming halted the emerging glaciation.

Two thousand years ago, the Arctic remnants of a once-vast ice sheet started to grow again. It was the beginning of a new glacial period, more conversationally known as the next ice age—but by the 1960s, summer temperatures were already so high that the ice sheet started to shrink. In other words, global warming ended a period of glaciation that had already begun.