The Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean off Greenland, have existed for many thousand of years. But these ice sheets are not permanent features of the planet Earth. If we take a look at the history of the Earth going back 260 million years, Ice sheets have existed for only 1 percent of that time, the period known as the Quaternary ice age. So what caused Ice Sheets to form? Attempting to answer this question will help us also understand many of the mechanisms underlying modern climate change.

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