The History of Ice on Planet Earth

Our planet has been completely ice free for most of its 4.5-billion-year history.

So, the fact that we have ice caps in Greenland and in Antarctica today is unusual.

In the first part of this talk we will see how it was possible for events to change so that that ice covered most of the planet on at least two separate occasions.

In the second part we will look more closely at the relatively recent ice ‘age’ which was (only) 30000 years ago but it is significant as it represents the period when modern man finally settled in Europe.

We will also take a brief look at the ‘Little’ ice age of the 17^th century when the Thames froze.