Quaternary glaciation

The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation or the current ice age, is a series of glacial events separated by interglacial events during the Quaternary period from 2.58 Ma (million years ago) to present. During this period, ice sheets expanded, notably from out of Antarctica and Greenland, and fluctuating ice sheets occurred elsewhere (for example, the Laurentide ice sheet). The major effects of the ice age are erosion and deposition of material over large parts of the continents, modification of river systems, creation of millions of lakes, changes in sea level, development of pluvial lakes far from the ice margins, isostatic adjustment of the crust, and abnormal winds. It affected oceans, flooding, and biological communities. The ice sheets themselves, by raising the albedo, affect a major feedback on climate cooling.

The Quaternary glaciation was the first ice age to be demonstrated in geology, and proved that these were possible. This was done over the 1700s and 1800s CE.

Over the last century, extensive field observations have provided evidence that continental glaciers covered large parts of Europe, North America, and Siberia. Maps of glacial features were compiled after many years of fieldwork by hundreds of geologists who mapped the location and orientation of drumlins, eskers, moraines, striations, and glacial stream channels. These maps revealed the extent of the ice sheets, the direction of flow, and the locations of systems of meltwater channels, and they allowed scientists to decipher a history of multiple advances and retreats of the ice. Even before the theory of worldwide glaciation was generally accepted, many observers recognized that more than a single advance and retreat of the ice had occurred.

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