More information: Hong Ao et al, Orbital- and millennial-scale Asian winter monsoon variability across the Pliocene–Pleistocene glacial intensification, Nature Communications (2024). DOI ...

These glaciers didn’t stop until they buried much of the northern continents. Scientists have long tied this spread to shifts in Earth’s orbit, which led to cooler Northern Hemisphere summers.

It’s strange to think it but technically speaking we are in the middle of an ice age ... to the cold northern regions of the planet, so more snow fell. And slowly, the northern hemisphere ...

Before that the Ice Ages covered most of the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers. The last of the five major ice ages, called the Pleistocene glaciation, began about 1.5 million years ago.

coinciding with major global changes such as Northern Hemisphere glaciation and a weakening of the monsoon system. After the mid-Pleistocene transition, around 700,000 years ago, rainfall became ...