Temperatures of sea water fringing South Pole were tropical 50 million years ago
Thursday, October 8, 2009 - 21:42
in Earth & Climate
(PhysOrg.com) -- The temperature difference between equatorial and polar sea waters was minimal during the extremely warm 'Greenhouse world' 60 to 50 million years ago. This is the main conclusion drawn by a team of scientists from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The team of scientists, headed by Peter Bijl, show that circum-Antarctic sea water exceeded 30ºC at that time. The results were published in Nature this week.