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Evidence from Antarctic ice cores have revealed a close correlation between surface temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration for the past 800,000 years (excluding the immediate present.) A recent analysis of Antarctic blue ice has found that the close correlation between temperature CO2 extends to 1.5 million years ago during the time when the glacial/interglacial period was 40,000 years.
A seminal book by Milankovitch in 1941 proposed that the sequence of ice ages that has characterized long term changes in the Earth’s climate over the past hundreds of thousands of years was due to changes in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth as a result of small variations in the Earth’s orientation and orbit with respect to the sun. Since then research has shown that Milankovitch cycles by themselves do not determine the timing of glacial and interglacial cycles and that we still lack a unified mechanism that links changes in Earth’s orbit to ice ages.
Marine cores collected in the western tropical Pacific were used to compare the chronology of Southern Ocean warming near Antarctica and rising CO2 during the last deglaciation. The results provide evidence that the Southern Ocean off Antarctica warmed by ~2°C between 19,000 and 17,000 years before the present, about 1,000 years before the rise in atmospheric CO2.
This study reports measurements from ocean floor sediments that provide the first direct evidence that not only do variations in the primary North/South Atlantic current correlate with periods of rapid warming and slower cooling in the Northern Hemisphere during the last ice age, but that the changes in the Atlantic overturning current occurred before and likely initiated these warming/cooling cycles.
In contrast to West Antarctica where several large glaciers have been losing ice for decades, East Antarctica glaciers have exhibited little evidence of ice loss but NASA’s latest detailed maps of East Antarctica ice velocity and elevation show that a number of glaciers have begun to lose ice over the past decade.
Between 2005 and 2017 the U.S. economy as measured by real GDP expanded by about 20 %. Over this same period, emissions from power generation dropped which is evidence of a decoupling between economic growth and power generation.
June 5, 2017
Approximately 800,000 years ago something changed in the Earth’s climate system that led to the climate then following a series of approximately 100,000 year cycles. Small, predictable changes in the Earth’s orbit about the Sun act as triggers for the glacial and interglacial periods, but other factors such as ice sheet volume, CO2 concentration, and biological feedback mechanisms are also involved.
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During the first pulse of increasing atmospheric CO2 at the beginning of the last deglaciation the carbon-13 ratio dropped precipitously indicating that a source of the CO2 was a large pool of carbon of organic origin. Comparison with other data including the atmospheric carbon-14 record point at outgassing from Southern Ocean deep water as the source of the CO2 increase in this early period of the deglaciation.
A recent study has created a simple mathematical rule that can account for the timing of the onset of interglacials following ice ages over the past three million years. The rule is based on predictable long-term astronomical variations in the Earth’s orbit and tilt called Milankovitch cycles.
In January 1998, a collaborative ice-drilling project between Russia, the United States, and France at the Russian Vostok revealed that over the past four cycles atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide correlates closely with Antarctic air-temperature. The analysis also suggests a sequence of events that is characteristic of every termination; warming by orbital forcing, then increasing greenhouse gases, and followed by ice sheet melting and reduced albedo.
Air bubbles in Greenland ice cores are analyzed to compare changes in Greenland surface temperature and atmospheric methane concentration during a rapid warming event lasting 200 years during the last deglaciation. It is found that changes in Greenland surface temperature and atmospheric methane emissions occurred essentially synchronously indicating that this warming event included the tropics.