Question: Will there be another ice age and if so, when?

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 20 Nov 2014:

There should be another ice age, scientists looking at the different layers of soil, rock and ice at the north and south poles can tell what the weather was like for the last few million years! Not in great detail, but they can easily find out what the world’s average temperature was like way back.

Looking at the world’s temperature like that, scientists found out that the average temperature has plummeted several times in the last few million years, which means that there have been lots of ice ages over a long time. So we know it’s been happening in cycles, which means it will probably happen again!

When though is a tricky question. By looking at how often ice ages happened in the past, we would probably have another ice age in the next 1,500 years. But that doesn’t account for global warming: all the carbon dioxide humans have released into the atmosphere has caused more of the sun’s heat to be trapped, making the planet warmer. At the very least, global warming will probably delay the next ice age by a couple of thousand years, or might even stop ice ages altogether!