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Science 23 August 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5585, pp. 1287 - 1288
DOI: 10.1126/science.1076120
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Perspectives

CLIMATE:
An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?

A. Berger and M. F. Loutre

Today's comparatively warm climate has been the exception more than the rule during the last 500,000 years or more. If recent warm periods (or interglacials) are a guide, then we may soon slip into another glacial period. But Berger and Loutre argue in their Perspective that with or without human perturbations, the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years. The reason is a minimum in the eccentricity of Earth's orbit around the Sun.

The authors are at the Université catholique de Louvain, Institut d'Astronomie et de Géophysique G. Lemaître, 2 Chemin du Cyclotron, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. E-mail: berger{at}astr.ucl.ac.be

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