global cooling Archives

(a) Annual mean sea ice concentration and sea ice thickness at the end of the simulations. Red lines in TSI100 indicate the presentday winter sea ice edge (Hirahara et al., 2014), and the contour in TSI094 indicates the simulated annual mean sea ice thickness (unit: m). The red shades on the land grid indicate that the monthly minimum snow depth exceeds 1 cm. (b) Annual mean surface shortwave albedo. -- physics.geo-ph

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Climate And Ocean Circulation Changes Toward A Modern Snowball Earth

by Keith CowingApril 2, 2026April 2, 2026

It has been hypothesized that the Earth may have experienced snowball events in the past, during which its surface became completely covered with ice. Previous studies used general circulation models […]

Idealized ice growth and stratigraphy at onset of snowball Earth. Note vertical exaggeration.

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Four-million-year Marinoan Snowball Shows Multiple Routes To Deglaciation

by Keith CowingApril 22, 2025April 22, 2025

Twice during the Neoproterozoic Era, Earth experienced runaway ice-albedo catastrophes that resulted in multimillion year, low-latitude glaciations: the Sturtian and Marinoan snowball Earths.