Andy Ridgwell

Carbon's hidden superpower: How extreme warming can trigger an ice age

tomwt — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 23:03:39 +0000

Carbon's hidden superpower: How extreme warming can trigger an ice age tomwt Fri, 02/20/2026 - 15:03 More CNAS in the Media Nathan Howes | The Weather Network February 15, 2026

THE WEATHER NETWORK - Scientists may have solved a mystery of how Earth recycles its carbon, and what it could mean for the future.

The general understanding of how Earth's climate is regulated is that it happens through the climate-sensitive reaction of carbon dioxide (CO2) removal by the weathering of silicate rocks on land.

As a result, there is a negative, stabilizing feedback on CO2 that behaves as a planetary climate “thermostat,” so to speak, according to authors of a recent study. But the extreme cooling and "snowball Earth" affairs that were periodic during the Precambrian era (prior to 539 million years ago) indicated there were past instances of the aforementioned moderation process breaking down.

As well, a potential secondary thermostat and an additional, planetary CO2 removal mechanism were alluded to during the times of respite from the far-reaching, organic carbon burial in Earth's history.

“As the planet gets hotter, rocks weather faster and take up more CO2, cooling the planet back down again,” said Andy Ridgwell, University of California, Riverside (UCR) geologist and co-author of the September 2025 study, in a news release.

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Andy Ridgwell

Climate change could heat the Earth right into a new ice age

tomwt — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:57:23 +0000

Climate change could heat the Earth right into a new ice age tomwt Mon, 11/17/2025 - 10:57 More CNAS in the Media Darren Orf | Popular Mechanics November 14, 2025

POPULAR MECHANICS - Like all of us, the Earth goes through phases. Over the course of its existence, the planet’s climactic processes have relied on certain mechanisms to regulate its temperature—mechanisms that can have profound impacts on the surface of the planet and, in turn, the life that inhabits that surface. During the Jurassic period, for example, the Earth was so warm that Antarctica was home to temperate rainforests. Rewind the evolutionary clock a couple hundred million years to the Cryogenian (720 to 635 million years ago), and Earth was essentially a giant snowball—an example of when Earth’s natural regulatory systems went a bit haywire.

Today, the Earth is experiencing a warming period unlike any other. The Jurassic, which was warm due to high levels of atmospheric carbon, reached its sweltering temperatures gradually, whereas anthropogenic climate change has caused much more rapid shifts—so rapid, in fact, that certain climactic changes have been discernible even within the average human lifespan.

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“At the end of the day, does it really matter much if the start of the next ice age is 50, 100, or 200 thousand years into the future?” Andy Ridgwell, Professor of Geology at UC Riverside, said in a press statement. “We need to focus now on limiting ongoing warming. That the Earth will naturally cool back down is not going to happen fast enough to help us out.”

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Andy Ridgwell

Hidden, supercharged 'thermostat' may cause Earth to overcorrect for climate change

tomwt — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:28:45 +0000

Hidden, supercharged 'thermostat' may cause Earth to overcorrect for climate change tomwt Mon, 10/13/2025 - 08:28 More CNAS in the Media Sascha Pare | Live Science October 11, 2025

LIVE SCIENCE - Earth may respond to the huge quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) that humans are pumping into the atmosphere by "overcorrecting" the imbalance, which could result in the next ice age arriving on time instead of being delayed by tens of thousands of years, as had previously been predicted.

This is due to a newfound "thermostat" that buries mountains of carbon beneath the seafloor so efficiently, it could do away with human carbon emissions within 100,000 years, researchers have discovered.

That's several times quicker than scientists assumed would happen with a previously described "lazy thermostat" that locks away carbon on timescales of 500,000 to 1 million years, the team reported in a study published Sept. 25 in the journal Science.

With both thermostats working in tandem, it's possible that the next ice age could start on time, instead of being delayed by the effects of climate change, study co-author Andy Ridgwell, a professor of geology at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science.

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Andy Ridgwell

Carbon cycle ‘flaw’ can overshoot, plunging Earth into potential Ice Age: Study

tomwt — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 21:56:40 +0000

Carbon cycle ‘flaw’ can overshoot, plunging Earth into potential Ice Age: Study tomwt Wed, 10/01/2025 - 14:56 More CNAS in the Media Mrigakshi Dixit | Interesting Engineering October 01, 2025

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - A new study has provided fresh insights into how Earth recycles its carbon.

Rock weathering acts as the slow, reliable mechanism that stabilizes Earth’s climate. The easy explanation is that rain, rocks, and carbon burial keep the climate in check, but new research shows this account may be incomplete.

The University of California, Riverside, team discusses a new perspective on Earth’s climate regulation, suggesting that the rock weathering system is not the whole story.

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Andy Ridgwell

How global warming today could trigger a future ice age

tomwt — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:53:58 +0000

How global warming today could trigger a future ice age tomwt Mon, 09/29/2025 - 15:53 More CNAS in the Media Eric Ralls | Earth.com September 29, 2025

EARTH.COM - Earth has never stood still when it comes to climate. For billions of years, our planet has cycled between heat and cold, shaping the environment where life evolved.

But new research from UC Riverside (UCR) reveals that the story of Earth’s carbon balance is more complicated than once believed.

The findings suggest that global warming could eventually tip into the opposite extreme – another ice age.

Rocks regulate Earth’s climate
The common scientific view has been that Earth regulates temperature through rock weathering. When rainwater absorbs carbon dioxide, it interacts with rocks on land, especially silicate-rich ones like granite.

This chemical process dissolves minerals, and the captured carbon eventually travels to the ocean. There, it combines with calcium, forming shells and limestone reefs that lock away carbon for hundreds of millions of years.

“As the planet gets hotter, rocks weather faster and take up more CO₂, cooling the planet back down again,” said Andy Ridgwell, a UCR geologist and co-author of the study.

This system works slowly but reliably, helping to stabilize climate over geological timescales. Yet history shows it is not always enough.

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Andy Ridgwell

How algae survived a mass extinction

ilseu — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 17:25:55 +0000

How algae survived a mass extinction ilseu Mon, 11/09/2020 - 09:25 More CNAS in the Media Ira Flotow | Science Friday November 06, 2020

SCIENCE FRIDAY - Sixty-six million years ago when an asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan peninsula, it set off a period of near global darkness for almost two years. Scientists think a majority of land species went extinct during that time, but what was going on in the planet’s oceans? And how were these ecosystems able to bounce back?

In a new paper published in Science Advances, researchers say what saved Earth’s oceans may have been a type of algae that could hunt for food. Ira is joined by one of the paper’s authors, Andrew Ridgwell, a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Riverside, to discuss the little algae that could.

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Andy Ridgwell

Algae survived the post-dinosaur-killing asteroid darkness by eating other creatures

ilseu — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 17:32:04 +0000

Algae survived the post-dinosaur-killing asteroid darkness by eating other creatures ilseu Tue, 11/03/2020 - 09:32 More CNAS in the Media Stephen Luntz | IFLScience October 30, 2020

IFLSCIENCE - One of the most extraordinary things about the impact of an asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago is not what died, but what survived. A new study found that one order of marine algae made it through by changing its source of energy, feeding on other life forms instead of harvesting sunlight. In the process, they greatly sped up the recovery of oceanic ecosystems.

In the Cretaceous, as today, photosynthetic algae formed the base of the open ocean's food webs. When the asteroid struck, causing the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event, or K/PG, the world became shrouded in darkness from soot cutting off access to sunlight.

"If you remove algae, which form the base of the food chain, everything else should die. We wanted to know how Earth's oceans avoided that fate, and how our modern marine ecosystem re-evolved after such a catastrophe." Professor Andrew Ridgwell of the University of California, Riverside said in a statement.

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Andy Ridgwell