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A fresh take on ancient climate change in the North Pacific

Climate anomalies punctuated the last ice age, characterized by the discharge of icebergs that released fresh water into the North Atlantic Ocean. It now emerges that fresh water also sometimes flooded the North Pacific.
  1. Kaustubh Thirumalai

    1. Kaustubh Thirumalai is in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA.

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Abrupt cold snaps known as Heinrich events occurred during past ice ages1. These millennial-scale periods of colder climate were associated with massive influxes of fresh water to the North Atlantic Ocean. The influxes were caused by discharge of icebergs from the Laurentide Ice Sheet — an immense sheet of ice that covered most of central and eastern North America during glacial epochs (Fig. 1). Studies of such events are of great interest because they could help to indicate whether rapid reorganizations of ocean circulation might occur in the future, and how they might affect climate2. In a paper in Nature, Maier et al.3 investigate how Heinrich events affected the North Pacific region during the last glaciation (roughly 115,000 to 12,000 years ago), and the influence of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, North America’s western counterpart of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. They report links between changes in ocean circulation in the North Atlantic and melting of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.

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Nature 559, 185-186 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05614-y

References

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