caa a22 4500 445814152 CHVBK 20180317145220.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20110901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10712-011-9140-4 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10712-011-9140-4 Ramstein Gilles Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement/CEA Saclay, IPSL UMR 8212, CNRS, l'Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France aut Climates of the Earth and Cryosphere Evolution [Elektronische Daten] [Gilles Ramstein] The interrelationship between the cryosphere and the climate is not always operating on Earth over a scale of billions or millions of years. Indeed, most of the time, the Earth is regulated at temperatures such that no ice sheet exists. Nevertheless, it is very fruitful to understand the conditions where and when ice sheets were triggered during the Earth's history. This paper deals with the paleoclimate and the cryosphere in the last 4.6 Ga and explains the different processes that make the climate of the first 4billion years warm despite the weaker solar luminosity. We also describe the more recent evolution in the last 65million years when a global decrease in atmospheric CO2 from around 4 PAL to 1 PAL was associated with a global cooling (1 PAL present atmospheric level=280ppm). It is in this context that the Quaternary occurred characterized by low atmospheric CO2 and the presence of two perennial ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. The last million years are certainly the most documented since direct and reliable CO2 measurements are available. They are characterized by a complex climate/cryosphere dynamics leading to oscillations between long glacial periods with four ice sheets and shorter ones with only two ice sheets (interglacial). We are currently living in one of those interglacials, generally associated with a CO2 level of 280ppm. Presently, anthropogenic activities are seriously perturbing the carbon cycle and the atmospheric CO2 content and therefore the climate. The last but not least question raised in this paper is to investigate whether the anthropogenic perturbation may lead to a melting of the ice sheets. The Author(s), 2011 Paleoclimate nationallicence Thermal regulation nationallicence Onset of ice sheets nationallicence Climate/cryosphere modelling nationallicence Surveys in Geophysics Springer Netherlands 32/4-5(2011-09-01), 329-350 0169-3298 32:4-5<329 2011 32 10712 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-011-9140-4 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-011-9140-4 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Ramstein Gilles Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement/CEA Saclay, IPSL UMR 8212, CNRS, l'Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Surveys in Geophysics Springer Netherlands 32/4-5(2011-09-01), 329-350 0169-3298 32:4-5<329 2011 32 10712 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer