Off the coast of Antarctica, the sea ice retreated toward the southernmost continent and, like a bottle cap taken off a soda bottle, that reduced pressure slowed down a process of critical carbon dioxide capture, dramatically accelerating the warming of the planet.
But all that happened thousands of years ago, one of the death knells of the last ice age.
And yet, the sea ice of our own age is also retreating, so it’s critical that we understand these oceanic processes that have such a profound effect on the globe.
An oceanic seesaw
We’ve long known that the warming of the Antarctic Ocean contributed to the end of the last ice age, but the traditional hypothesis asserted that the abyssal water around Antarctica and the deep water of the North Atlantic warmed in a “seesaw” pattern “that suggested when one weakened, the other strengthened,” says Chengfei He, a Northeastern University climatologist.
He — an assistant professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern — discovered something that could be a cause for a radical reinterpretation.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
