The atlas · Back through time

Climate history

Hothouses, ice ages and the climate we have now.

1 written · 7 in outline · 3 sections

Ice and heat

Snowball EarthLesson · outline
The times ice may have reached the equator, and the evidence for and against.
Hothouse EarthsLesson · outline
Times when the Earth had no ice caps at all, and what kept them warm.
Ice agesLesson
Wobbles in our orbit set the beat. When the ice came, Britain vanished under it and the sea fell 134 metres.
A sudden warming, 56 million years agoLesson · outline
A burst of warming at the end of the Paleocene, and what it may say about today.

Reading past climatesLesson · outline
Ice cores, sea-floor shells, tree rings and rocks: how past temperatures are read.
Temperature through timeReference · outline
The Earth’s average temperature over 540 million years, from two independent studies.

Climate feedbacksLesson · outline
How ice, water vapour and carbon can make a change bigger or smaller.
The long carbon cycleLesson · outline
How volcanoes, weathering rock and the sea set the level of carbon dioxide over millions of years.