Surprisingly, ice ages are caused by the imbalance caused by the land mass of the northern hemisphere. This imbalance is temporarily corrected with an ice age. This is because the Earth’s moment of inertia changes.
Glaciers centered around 85 N. latitude at the top of the Labrador Current between Greenland and Canada..
With axial tilt going from 22.1° to 24.5° tells us that the Earth’s tilt will increase at a rate of about 0.000024° per year between ice ages. This is relative to the stored momentum in the land masses of the northern hemisphere. With the current axial tilt of 23.4393°, it’s safe to assume that the next 1.607° will happen
over the next 100,000 years resulting in the next ice age. This translates to about 0.001607 of axial tilt a year. It’s quite possible that the interglacial is winding down. This could take several thousand years to be noticeable.
What these images help to illustrate is how “out of balance” the Earth is. If it were a ball bearing t cm wide, the Earth’s surface would be very minor scratches on its surface.
The Pacific Ocean covers about 1/2 of the Earth’s surface (close enough)
And the difference between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres
What this has to do with is the Conservation of Momentum. The difference between the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean and the land masses of the Northern Hemisphere has different forces acting on the Earth’s rotation and orbit around the Sun.
A part of this is because glaciers need land and during ice ages, notice where the center is, West north of Hudson Bay
It’s during this warm interglacial period that momentum is conserved in the higher elevations of the northern hemisphere that will cause the Earth to wobble. As a result this wobble will change the Earth’s angular momentum. This will slow the Earth’s spin allowing for more of the Sun’s orbital velocity to be converted into linear momentum in the Earth.
With the ending of an ice age, the Earth’s moment of inertia has changed. When Sea levels drop and glaciers grow, the Earth will spin faster as a result as this figure skater demonstrates https://youtu.be/FmnkQ2ytlO8?si=JPLYUWQRO3v_0tJH
Basically the land masses of the northern hemisphere store a lot of energy. It takes an ice age to correct the imbalance caused by the energy those land masses store.
That amount of energy can be determined by the amount of moment inertia shift to correct the Earth’s axial tilt and over how much time.
When the Earth spins faster then the Sun’s gravitational assist from its orbital velocity will not have the Earth orbiting the Sun as quickly. When this happens the Earth will move closer to the Sun.
Solar iIrradiance demonstrates the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. A small change of less than 1 w/m^2 account for warm and cool periods unless heat energy is conserved in the Earth’s atmosphere according to the 1st law of thermodynamics and Einstein’s https://youtube.com/shorts/J2uK9zgzTRI?si=LJaHnM7xw7o775xG
Heat can be conserved as matter in the Earth thermogaline circulation. It’s possible that the heat from warm Interglacials is conserved in the thermogaline circulation. For more information, read the Warm and Cool Periods page.