Summary
Jane Francis, Richard Corfield and Carrie Lear join Melvyn Bragg to discuss ice ages, periods when a reduction in the surface temperature of the Earth has resulted in ice sheets at the Poles. Although the term 'ice age' is commonly associated with prehistoric eras when much of northern Europe was covered in ice, we are in fact currently in an ice age which began up to 40 million years ago. Geological evidence indicates that there have been several in the Earth's history, although their precise cause is not known. Ice ages have had profound effects on the geography and biology of our planet.
With:
Jane Francis Professor of Paleoclimatology at the University of Leeds
Richard Corfield Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University
Carrie Lear Senior Lecturer in Palaeoceanography at Cardiff University.
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
| 0:38.7 | For more details about in our time and for our terms of use please go to BBC.co. UK slash radio for. I hope you enjoy |
| 0:45.9 | the program. |
| 0:46.9 | Hello 20,000 years ago much of Northern Europe was covered in thick ice. A prehistoric visitor to what |
| 0:54.4 | is now the British Isles would have found much of the North covered by an ice sheet |
| 0:58.1 | while even the South would have been barren and freezing cold. This episode |
| 1:02.1 | from our past is frequently called the Ice Age |
| 1:04.2 | but that's not strictly accurate. In fact the latest Ice Age began millions of |
| 1:08.0 | years ago and we're still in it. We want to emerge from it until the ice caps in |
| 1:11.9 | Greenland and the Antarctic melt sometime in the |
| 1:14.4 | distant future. Ice ages a period of dramatic global cooling. Earth has experienced several |
| 1:20.1 | of these episodes in this history, some of them hundreds of millions of years ago. |
| 1:24.0 | They've had a huge effect on the way the planet looks and on the organisms living on it. |
| 1:28.0 | But how do we know about Ice Ages? What causes them and why do they come to an end? |
| 1:32.0 | We need to discuss ice ages are Jane Francis, |
| 1:35.4 | Professor of Paleoclimatology at the University of Leeds. |
... |
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