Ice Ages - Solving the Mystery

John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie PSU QE697.I45 1979

Nice history of ice age science. Did not read whole book, no time.

Chapter 12: Milankovitch Revival

Correlation of histories of sea level change

Chapter 13: Signal from the Earth

• 1906 Bernard Brunhes learns bricks and then rocks freeze in Earth's magnetic field as they cool
• 1930's? Motonori Matuyama finds reversals in lava flows in Japan and Korea
• 1955-1965 proof of worldwide correlation
• Vruhes-Matuyama boundary 700 kya, later found in deep-sea cores

Chapter 14: Pulsebeat of Climate

• ice sheets large, central Europe polar climate, windy with loess deposits.
  • ice sheets small, warm and wet with broadleaf trees
• oxygen-isotope ratio varies from 0 to -2 (something), 6 times in 400 Ky

Ch 15: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages

• 1971 CLIMAP project
  • International Decade of Ocean Exploration IDOE. Columbia, Brown, OSU; later Maine and Princeton, later worldwide

Ch 16: The Coming Ice Age

• Photocopy on file
• Fig 43 shows temperature variation over last 11 ky, with a climatic peak ("optimum") at 6.5 kya, and a 6C colder minimum at 10.5 kya. The "little ice age" is shown. No citation for the data source, it may be illustrative rather than a direct plotting of data.

• Fig 45 is the last 1000 years, with the "little ice age" featured, adapted from H.H. Lamb 1969

• p185 "effects will endure for 1000 years, Fig 47 temperature hockey stick graph, 6 F per century,

• p186 Fig 48 175 kY window, showing 140 kY climate cycle and CO2 "superglacial" as a 3 F extra peak, citation JM Mitchell Jr 1977, perhaps "Carbon Dioxide and Future Climate" pp 3-9, Environmental Data Service, March, U.S. Dept. Commerce, but not this JM Mitchell Jr 1977