General Scientific Direction ONERA, BP 72, 92322 Chantillon cedex, France
The last ice age was maximum circa 19,000 BC and its map shows a beautiful
symmetry about a “pole” in the present Baffin Sea. The astrodynamical study
of the Earth’s rotation leads to the concept of a “stable equilibrium position
of the poles”. The estimation of the Earth inertia matrix during the last ice
age is not yet accurate enough to confirm the past position of the pole near
the Baffin Sea, but it shows that indeed the pole could have moved that far in
a few millennia. This estimation also shows that the Earth polar moment of
inertia had increased very slightly during the melting of the last ice age, with
a corresponding huge release of energy. This release, with the 120-meter rise
of sea level and the upheaval of climate, has contributed to make that age an
age of natural disasters.
