List of periods and events in climate history


The list of periods and events in climate history includes some notable climate events known to paleoclimatology. Knowledge of precise climatic events decreases as the record goes further back in time. The timeline of glaciation covers ice ages specifically, which tend to have their own names for phases, often with different names used for different parts of the world. The names for earlier periods and events come from geology and paleontology. The marine isotope stages are often used to express dating within the Quaternary.

Before 1 million years ago

Scale: Millions of years before present, earlier dates approximate.
Date
Event
Before 1,000Faint young Sun paradox
2,400Great Oxidation Event probably leads to Huronian glaciation perhaps covering the whole globe
650–600Later Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth or Marinoan glaciation, precursor to the Cambrian explosion
517End-Botomian mass extinction; like the next two, little understood
502Dresbachian extinction event
Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event
450–440Ordovician–Silurian extinction event, in two bursts, after cooling perhaps caused by tectonic plate movement
450Andean-Saharan glaciation
360–260Karoo Ice Age
305Cooler climate causes Carboniferous rainforest collapse
251.9Permian–Triassic extinction event
199.6Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, causes as yet unclear
66Perhaps 30,000 years of volcanic activity form the Deccan Traps in India, or a large meteor impact.
Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary and Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, extinction of non-avian dinosaurs
55.8Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum
53.7Eocene Thermal Maximum 2
49Azolla event may have ended a long warm period
5.3–2.6Pliocene climate became cooler and drier, and seasonal, similar to modern climates.
2.5 to presentQuaternary glaciation, with permanent ice on the polar regions, many named stages in different parts of the world

Pleistocene

All dates are approximate. "" means this is one of the periods from the Blytt-Sernander sequence, originally based on studies of Danish peat bogs.
Date
Event
118,000–88,000Abbassia Pluvial wet in North Africa
108,000–8,000Last Glacial Period, not to be confused with the Last Glacial Maximum or Late Glacial Maximum below.
48,000–28,000Mousterian Pluvial wet in North Africa
26,500–19,000Last Glacial Maximum, what is often meant in popular usage by "Last Ice Age"
16,000–13,000Oldest Dryas cold, begins slowly and ends sharply
12,700Antarctic Cold Reversal warmer Antarctic, sea level rise
12,400Bølling oscillation warm and wet in the North Atlantic, begins the Bølling-Allerød period
12,400–11,500
Older Dryas cold, interrupts warm period for some centuries
12,000–11,000Allerød oscillation warm & moist
11,400–9,500Huelmo–Mascardi Cold Reversal cold in Southern Hemisphere
10,800–9,500Younger Dryas sudden cold and dry period in Northern Hemisphere
9,500–5,500Holocene climatic optimum A warm period about 4.9 °C warmer than the LGM

Holocene

All dates are BC and approximate. "" means this is one of the periods from the Blytt-Sernander sequence, originally based on studies of Danish peat bogs.
Date
Event
From 10,000Holocene glacial retreat, the present Holocene or Postglacial period begins
9400Pre-Boreal sharp rise in temperature over 50 years, precedes Boreal
8500–6900Boreal, rising sea levels, forest replaces tundra in northern Europe
7500–3900Neolithic Subpluvial/African humid period in North Africa, wet
7000–3000Holocene climatic optimum, or Atlantic in northern Europe
62008.2-kiloyear event cold
5000–4100Older Peron warm and wet, global sea levels were higher than the twentieth-century average
39005.9 kiloyear event dry and cold.
3500End of the African humid period, Neolithic Subpluvial in North Africa, expands Sahara Desert
3000 – 0Neopluvial in North America
3,200–2,900Piora Oscillation, cold, perhaps not global. Wetter in Europe, drier elsewhere, linked to the domestication of the horse in Central Asia.
22004.2-kiloyear event dry, lasted most of the 22nd century BC, linked to the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, various archaeological cultures in Persia and China
1800–1500Middle Bronze Age Cold Epoch, a period of unusually cold climate in the North Atlantic region
Bond Event 2Possibly triggering the Late Bronze Age collapse
900–300Iron Age Cold Epoch cold in North Atlantic. Perhaps associated with the Homeric Minimum
250 BC–400 ADRoman Warm Period

Common Era/AD