Comments 1 to 4:

1. william5331 at 07:00 AM on 15 July, 2020

   Just a wee quibble.  The last icy period wasn't an ice age.  It was an glacial or glacial period and we are now in an interglacial.  I have no problem with calling that period from the Eemian to the Holocene an ice age but we then need a different term for the ice age that we are in the middle of, which started some 2.75m years ago.  Is this just quibbling.  Well no.  A great TV program by Nat Geo suggested that the extinction of the fauna of North America was caused by the change in climate coming out of the "Ice Age".  What they should of said was coming out of a glacial period.  They ignored the fact that through multiple cycles of glacial and interglacial, those same members of the mega-fauna survived quite well, thank you very much.  Using ambiguous, poorly defined terms leads to mis-conceptions. 

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2. Bob Loblaw at 11:20 AM on 15 July, 2020

   William's description of the terminology is in agreement with my understanding.

   • Ice ages are times when there is long-term ice ice in some locations on the planet, and we currently have such ice in mountainous regions as well as Greenland and Antarctica. We are in an ice age.
   • During an ice age, periods with extensive ice are "glacial periods", and periods will relatively little ice are "interglacials". We have much less ice now than during the last glacial maximum; we are in an interglacial.

   The mis-use of the term "ice age" is pretty common.

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3. Philippe Chantreau at 00:30 AM on 17 July, 2020

   Talking about that, anyone knows why NSIDC has been unable to update the sea ice extent and concentration maps? Showing no data for the past 2 days. This happened early a few days ago then was corrected but now it has been 2 days in a row. I think the extent graph has also not been updated.

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4. Philippe Chantreau at 00:35 AM on 17 July, 2020

   Sorry, looks like I should have been more diligent. Someone at Tamino's relayed this from NSIDC:

   "On Tuesday, July 14th and Wednesday, July 15th, the following data collections may not be available due to planned system maintenance: AMSR-E, Aquarius, ASO, High Mountain Asia, IceBridge, ICESat/GLAS, ICESat-2, MEaSUREs, MODIS, NISE, SMAP, SnowEx, and VIIRS."

   Hopefully will update later today or tomorrow.

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