Episode 10: The Younger Dryas Diaries

Created, narrated, and produced by Professor Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University, The Climate Chronicles reveals how climate change has shaped humanity’s past, and explores what history can tell us about the future of global warming. With clear, dramatic storytelling, each episode brings history to life through vivid storytelling and cutting-edge science.

In the fourth episode of our second season, Escaping the Pleistocene, Professor Degroot unpacks concepts such as radiocarbon dating and climate vulnerability to explore the ingenious and diverse ways in which our ancestors coped with the Pleistocene's final, and in many ways most spectacular, climate changes. He explains how everything from asteroid impacts to volcanic eruptions may have triggered the dramatic breakdown in ocean currents responsible for the most recent of these changes, a thousand-year cold snap known as the Younger Dryas. Finally, he surveys cutting-edge research that suggests we might soon face a similar breakdown—with profound implications for our modern world. Season two of The Climate Chronicles is an immersive journey through the extreme climate shifts that influenced some of the most important events in the history of our species, from a wave of extinctions that transformed ecosystems around the world to the emergence of agriculture. The season also explores the history of the sciences that have revealed how climate change shaped our deep past.

For an episode trailer and a transcript complete with citations, as well as maps, graphs, infographics, and other images, visit TheClimateChronicles.com.