The ice record shows a period in Earth’s history when there was an ice age and the global average temperature was much colder. During this time, the ice record shows the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere decreased, but the amount of energy from the sun did not change. How did the the total amount of energy in the Earth system change, how did this change happen, and how did it contribute to the ice age?​

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An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods, during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation, known in popular terminology as the Ice Age.[1] Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed glacial periods (or, alternatively, glacials, glaciations, glacial stages, stadials, stades, or colloquially, ice ages), and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called interglacials or interstadials.In the terminology of glaciology, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and southern hemispheres.[3] By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene. The amount of heat-trapping gases emitted into Earth's oceans and atmosphere is predicted to prevent the next glacial period, which otherwise would begin in around 50,000 years, and likely more glacial cycles.[4][5]