800
A new study has shown that the glaciation of the Earth's poles was the result of a random coincidence of rare natural processes, rather than the natural climatic development of the planet.
For most of its history, Earth has been in a warm climate, with ice ages, including the current one, which has lasted about 34 million years, being exceptions. The researchers used a model Earth System Model, covering the last 419 million years to combine all known climate cooling hypotheses.
Model SCION, developed at the University of Leeds, showed that no single factor – volcanic eruptions, forest expansion or chemical reactions of CO2 with rocks – could have caused a significant drop in temperature. Only their simultaneous interaction triggered the atmospheric cooling mechanism.
Scientists emphasize that the Earth's natural climate balance is biased toward warming, not cooling. "This trend protects us from the disastrous condition of "Snowball Earth", which occurs extremely rarely," – notes Meredith. This means that even with a reduction in anthropogenic CO emissions, the climate will not return to pre-industrial levels on its own, which requires responsible action to combat climate change.
