Heat Flow 1) To what depth are temperatures in the Earth affected by the ice age

Question

Heat Flow 1) To what depth are temperatures in the Earth affected by the ice ages? ( List all assumptions) 2) It takes about 4 min to boil a 60g hen's egg to make it edible for most people. For how long would it be advisable to boil an ostreich egg which weighs about 1.4 kg? (List all assumptions and SHOW SOLUTION) Heat Flow 1) To what depth are temperatures in the Earth affected by the ice ages? ( List all assumptions) 2) It takes about 4 min to boil a 60g hen's egg to make it edible for most people. For how long would it be advisable to boil an ostreich egg which weighs about 1.4 kg? (List all assumptions and SHOW SOLUTION) 1) To what depth are temperatures in the Earth affected by the ice ages? ( List all assumptions) 2) It takes about 4 min to boil a 60g hen's egg to make it edible for most people. For how long would it be advisable to boil an ostreich egg which weighs about 1.4 kg? (List all assumptions and SHOW SOLUTION)

Explanation / Answer

1. An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacial" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "ice age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene—of the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.

To understand climate change, the obvious first step would be to explain the colossal coming and going of ice ages. Scientists devised ingenious techniques to recover evidence from the distant past, first from deposits left on land, then also from sea floor sediments, and then still better by drilling deep into ice. These paleoclimatologists succeeded brilliantly, discovering a strangely regular pattern of glacial cycles. The pattern pointed to a surprising answer, so precise that some ventured to predict future changes. The timing of the cycles was apparently set by minor changes in sunlight caused by slow variations of the Earth's orbit. Just how that could regulate the ice ages remained uncertain, for the climate system turned out to be dauntingly complex. In particular, it turned out that"greenhouse" gases like carbon dioxide played a surprisingly powerful role in governing global climate. One lesson was clear: the system is delicately poised, so that a little stimulus might drive a great change. (There is a separate essay on shorter-term climate fluctuations, lasting a few years to a century or so, possibly related to Variations of the Sun.)

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