Science / Medicine : Ice Age Lost Its Cool Quickly

The harsh cold of the last Ice Age apparently ended far faster than previously thought, with conditions in Europe becoming milder in less than 20 years, researchers reported last week in Nature. A scientific team from the United States, Denmark and Iceland said its analysis of Greenland ice cores indicates an “extremely fast” climate shift in sub-Arctic Europe at the close of the last glacial cold period, about 10,700 years ago.

Scientists have suspected that the Ice Age’s final frigid spell, called the Younger Dryas, tailed off in perhaps a century or two. The new study is the first to show the speed at which the climate did its U-turn.

The researchers calculated the speed of the climate shift by looking at the level of dust and oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in ice cores taken from about 5,900 feet below Earth’s surface. They detected a sharp drop in dust levels in a three-foot section of the ice core, representing about two decades, which they said points to rapid warming, most likely triggered by the disintegration of ice sheets covering the North Atlantic.