Other studies have shown that the overturning circulation in the Atlantic has faced a slowdown during the last few decades. The scientific community is only beginning to understand what it would mean for global climate should this trend continue, as predicted by some climate models.
- Julia Gottschalk
A new study of the relationship between ocean currents and climate change has found that they are tightly linked, and that changes in the polar regions can affect the ocean and climate on the opposite side of the world within one to two hundred years, far quicker than previously thought.
The study, by an international team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge, examined how changes in ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean were related to climate conditions in the northern hemisphere during the last ice age, by examining data from ice cores and fossilised plankton shells. It found that variations in ocean currents and abrupt climate events in the North Atlantic region were tightly linked in the past, and that changes in the polar regions affected the ocean circulation and climate on the opposite side of the world.
The researchers determined that as large amounts of fresh water were emptied into the North Atlantic as icebergs broke off the North American and Eurasian ice sheets, the deep and shallow currents in the North Atlantic rapidly slowed down, which led to the formation of sea ice around Greenland and the subsequent cooling of the Northern Hemisphere. It also strongly affected conditions in the South Atlantic within a matter of one to two hundred years. The results, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, show how climate events in the Northern Hemisphere were tightly coupled with changes in the strength of deep ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean, and how that may have affected conditions across the globe.
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Image - Left: Marine sediment core sample from the South Atlantic with fossilised partially dissolved shells of planktonic organisms. Right: Well-preserved plankton shells.
Credit: Julia Gottschalk
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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