Termination II
The ice collapses in a few thousand years and the world flips into a warm interglacial.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 3 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Around 130,000 years ago the Saalian ice sheets disintegrate rapidly, sea level rises over 100 metres, and the Earth enters the Eemian interglacial. Glacial terminations are strikingly asymmetric — tens of thousands of years to build ice, a few thousand to lose it — because ice-albedo feedback, carbon dioxide release from the ocean, and mechanical collapse of marine ice margins all reinforce each other once melting starts. Termination II is the sharpest such event in the record.