Galciers were getting smaller in 1888 too... and seeing as that dramatic waterworld graphic of downtown Wellington is being spammed across threads...
THE GLACIAL PERIOD.Otago Witness , Issue 1893, 2 March 1888, Page 31
The intense cold of the Glacial Period must not be regarded as having been caused by conditions which were permanent in their nature. The period known to geology as the Ice Age was comparatively recent, but there is little doubt that similar periods of great cold preceded it at widely separated intervals, and that these were not occasioned by any mere terrestrial changes, but must be explained by cosmical causes. The most generally accepted explanation of these remarkable conditions is that the orbit of the earth has been in times past much more eccentric, or elongated, than now. This fact, Dr James Croll remarks in his work, " Climate and Time," would not of itself, perhaps, fully account for the low temperature producing the Glacial Period.; but through physical conditions caused by it this term of severe cold might be induced.
It is always, assumed that, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the winter of. the Northern Hemisphere at this time occurred when the earth was in aphelion, or at the point of its orbit furthest from the sun.
Croll estimates that the heat received then 1 at this point would be so much less than now that the mid-winter temperature would be lowered to an enormous extent, and the winters would not only be much colder, but also much longer than now.
The result of this would be an enormous accumulation of snow and ice during the winter, which the short summer would not suffice to melt.
The influences which brought the Ice Age to a close are supposed by Croll to be a gradual lessening of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the movement of the equinoxes bringing the winter solstice of the Northern Hemisphere back to perihelion, or the action of the ocean currents and the trade winds. He supposed, further, that the region of the equator was, during the Glacial Period, submerge — a fact which would tend to the free motion of the waters and the increase of the average warmth of the Southern Hemisphere, and a still further lowering of the temperature on the northern half of the globe. But the elevation of the land about the equator subsequently caused a deflection of the ocean currents northwards and the creation of the great current of the Gulf Stream, which has an enormous influence in the distribution of heat in the Northern Hemisphere.
But the important causes bringing the earth up to its present temperature, like those creating the very great depression of the Glacial Period, were those acting from without rather than existing conditions on the surface of the earth itself.
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=OW18880302.2.135.4&srpos=9&e=-------10--1----2%22ice+age%22-all
