Natural causes of Quaternary climate change

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Contents

The Earth's climate has changed naturally throughout the Quaternary, varying between cold glacial periods when much of the UK was buried beneath thick ice sheets, to warm interglacial periods like today. But caused this natural climate variability over the last 2.6 million years?

In this video, sponsored by the Geographical Association, we team up with Dr Rhian Meara and Dr Elizabeth Day to take a closer look at:

– The Earth's climate system and the natural greenhouse effect

– The global energy budget

– Orbital forcing

– Solar activity

– The effect of volcanoes and asteroid impacts

Acknowledgements

Written and developed by: Harriet Ridley, Rhian Meara, Aidan Hesslewood, Elizabeth Day, Rob Parker, Tim Parker.

Videography by: Harriet Ridley, Anna Korecká, Josh Carron.

Attributions

Greenland-ice_sheet_hg by Hgrobe is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.

The Top 5 Solar Discoveries Number 4 by NASA is in the Public Domain.

Two New Satellites Set to Study One of Earth's Most Critically Changing Regions by NASA is in the Public Domain.

SDO: Year 5 by NASA is in the Public Domain.

NASA ScienceCasts: Follow the Sun by NASA is in the Public Domain.

kilauea-lava-01 sound clip by e__ is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

cgeffex__wind-howling3 sound clip by CGEffex is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Solar Irradiance Reconstruction Data by Lean, J. 2000. Evolution of the Sun's Spectral Irradiance Since the Maunder Minimum. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 27, No. 16, pp. 2425-2428.

Pinatubo image by the USGS is in the Public Domain.

11.4 Other Natural Climate Change Causal Mechanisms by Dr. No Knows Weather is licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Frost Fair by Rita Greer is licensed under a Free Art Licence.

Milutin Milanković 2 is in the Public Domain.

Milutin Milankotvić is from Open Geosciences 11, 1; 10.1515/geo-2019-0021.

Math Formula Collection| Free HD Stock Footage by Video Farm is licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The dangers of asteroids and comets by the Institute of Physics is licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Thermometer animation by CrazyDivers is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

"Earth zoom out (Amazing)" by CompuTech is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Piano, Bach Fantasia, A (H4n) by InspectorJ is licensed under CC BY 3.0.