The study, which is reported in the journal Science, offers new insights into a decades-long debate about how the shifts in the Earth’s orbit relative to the sun have taken the Earth into and out of an ice-age climate.
Being able to reconstruct ancient climate change is a critical part of understanding why the climate behaves the way it does. It also helps us to predict how the planet might respond to man-made changes, such as the injection of large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, in the future.
Read the full story
Image: Tabular iceberg. The production of tabular icebergs is a major mechanism of mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Icebergs are calved during both rapid ice-shelf collapse and as part of the normal transfer of mass through the ice sheet to the surrounding ocean.
Credit: Julian Dowdeswell.
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
___________________________________________
1.5 million years of climate history revealed after scientists solve mystery of the deep
13 August 2012
Scientists have announced a major breakthrough in understanding the Earth’s climate machine by reconstructing highly accurate records of changes in ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures over the last 1.5 million years.