Overview of the various models for ice ages in the recent past

Abstract

More than 100 years ago, G. Frederick Wright (1896) said: “What were the causes of the accumulation of the ice sheets of the Glacial period? Upon their areas, warm or at least temperate climates had prevailed during long foregoing geologic ages, and again at the present time they have mostly mild and temperate conditions. The Pleistocene continental glaciers of North America, Europe, and Patagonia have disappeared; and the later and principal part of their melting was very rapid, as is known by various features of the contemporaneous glacial and modified drift deposits, and by the beaches and deltas of temporary lakes that were formed by the barrier of the receding ice sheets. Can the conditions and causes be found which first amassed the thick and vastly extended sheets of land ice, and whose cessation suddently permitted the ice to be quickly melted away?”