ice age adventures says i new snowington

The team also used new climate model simulations to test their hypothesis, finding that huge volumes of freshwater could be moved by the icebergs. The study found that these deposits, known as Ice-Rafted Debris, appeared to consistently lead to changes in deep ocean circulation, reconstructed from the chemistry of tiny deep-sea fossils called foraminifera. The rock fragments were obtained from sediments recovered by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 361, representing over 1.6 million years of history and one of the longest detailed archives of Antarctic icebergs. This in turn pushes the Earth into ice age conditions.Īs part of their study the scientists used multiple techniques to reconstruct past climate conditions, which included identifying tiny fragments of Antarctic rock dropped in the open ocean by melting icebergs. In their study, the team propose that when the orbit of Earth around the sun is just right, Antarctic icebergs begin to melt further and further away from Antarctica, shifting huge volumes of freshwater away from the Southern Ocean and into the Atlantic Ocean.Īs the Southern Ocean gets saltier and the North Atlantic gets fresher, large-scale ocean circulation patterns begin to dramatically change, pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and reducing the so-called greenhouse effect. However, up until now it has been a mystery as to how small variations in solar energy can trigger such dramatic shifts in the climate on Earth.

It has long been known that ice age cycles are paced by periodic changes to Earth's orbit of the sun, which subsequently changes the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface. The findings have been published today in Nature from an international consortium of scientists from universities around the world. Melting icebergs in the Antarctic are the key, say the team from Cardiff University, triggering a series of chain reactions that plunges Earth into a prolonged period of cold temperatures.

Ice age adventures says i new snowington