last interglacial | LIG

interglacial stage (1) | interglacial (2) | interglacial periode (3)

interglacial cycle | interglacial era | interglacial period

last interglacial

interglacial period

Aftonian interglacial interval

COincreases during the interglacials, decreases during the glacial maximum period, down to 180 ppm, back up into this last interglacial, again up to 280 to 300 ppm.

That's important because the geological evidence says that's how the climate system switches between ice ages and interglacials, that it turns off the convection in the North Atlantic and decides it will convect in the southern ocean instead.

However, when I consider the basic processes that operate in the climate system, when I consider that the magnitude of the changes of the radiative forcing due to these increased gases is getting to be of the same order of magnitude as the radiative changes associated with the triggering of the switches between glacial and interglacial periods, when I consider the speed at which those switches occur in the new geological records we get from ice cores and deep-sea sediment cores, and when I consider the whole mass of anomalous conditions which seem to have been appearing in the last one to two decades, I am convinced that climate change i ...[+++]n the near future is a real possibility.

I suggested recently in committee that the sun’s enormous influence on the earth’s climate over millions of years could not be ignored in this debate, and that the sequence of long ice ages, interspersed with short interglacial periods, was the most likely explanation.