Researchers decipher climate paradox from the Miocene
Friday, April 11, 2014 - 08:31
in Earth & Climate
Scientists of the German Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have deciphered a supposed climate paradox from the Miocene era by means of complex model simulations. When the Antarctic ice sheet grew to its present-day size around 14 million years ago, it did not get colder everywhere on the Earth, but there were regions that became warmer. A physical contradiction? No, as AWI experts now found out, the expansion of the ice sheet on the Antarctic continent triggered changes in winds, ocean currents and sea ice in the Southern Ocean that in the end led to the apparently contrary developments. The scientists report this in a new study published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.