What describes the Altithermal period?

What describes the Altithermal period?

1 In general, any period of high temperature. 2 Often used to refer specifically to a period of time in the mid‐Holocene, between about 4000 and 8000 years ago, when the climate was generally warmer (particularly during summer) than before or since. This period is also known as the hypsithermal or Climatic Optimum.

What did the Altithermal period lead to?

A dry postglacial interval centered about 5500 years ago during which temperatures were warmer than at present. Archaeological records show us that humans apparently came to live here during the Altithermal period, from 5,500 to 3,000 B.C., when the plains endured a period of very hot and dry weather.

When was the last warming period on Earth?

Earth has experienced cold periods (or “ice ages”) and warm periods (“interglacials”) on roughly 100,000-year cycles for at least the last 1 million years. The last of these ices ended around 20,000 years ago.

What caused the Holocene period?

That was caused by a strengthening of the African monsoon by changes in summer radiation, which resulted from long-term variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

What is the hypsithermal period?

The period from about 7000 to 500 B.C., proposed by E. S. Deevey and R. F. Flint (1957), during which global climate was thought to be warmer than today.

What time period is the Holocene?

It began approximately 11,650 cal years before present, after the last glacial period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period….

Holocene
Definition
Chronological unit Epoch
Stratigraphic unit Series
Time span formality Formal

How many warming periods have there been?

Since the end of the last Ice Age, the earth has enjoyed two periods that were warmer than the twentieth century. Archaeological evidence shows that people lived longer, enjoyed better nutrition, and multiplied more rapidly than during epochs of cold.

Are we coming out of an ice age?

In fact, we are technically still in an ice age. We’re just living out our lives during an interglacial. About 50 million years ago, the planet was too warm for polar ice caps, but Earth has mostly been cooling ever since. Starting about 34 million years ago, the Antarctic Ice Sheet began to form.

What was the hottest period on Earth?

Eocene
The Eocene, which occurred between 53 and 49 million years ago, was Earth’s warmest temperature period for 100 million years. However, the “super-greenhouse” priod had eventually become an icehouse period by the late Eocene.

What comes after the Holocene period?

After 11,700 years, the Holocene epoch may be coming to an end, with a group of geologists, climate scientists and ecologists meeting in Berlin this week to decide whether humanity’s impact on the planet has been big enough to deserve a new time period: the Anthropocene.