The late Miocene cooling
Temperatures fall, ice grows at both ends of the world, and the modern climate regime takes shape.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.7 million years
- Known to
- ± 500 thousand years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Through the last few million years of the Miocene, global temperatures decline, the Antarctic ice sheet expands, and the first substantial ice appears in the Northern Hemisphere — glaciers in Greenland, though not yet a continental sheet. Sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic drop measurably. The steepening pole-to-equator gradient strengthens winds and ocean circulation, and the world becomes markedly drier and more seasonal, which is the context for the grassland expansion and for early hominin evolution.