”With accelerated, asynchronous melting of modern polar ice sheets, increased disturbances to the climate system can be expected in the near future,” write researchers from institutes in China, Germany, Australia, the US and the UK.
A study by geologists and climate scientists from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences suggests that how the polar ice sheets formed and how they are now melting could have wider implications for the climate.
Twenty-eight researchers found that an asynchronous expansion of the polar ice sheets, in which the growth of the Antarctic ice sheet triggered rapid growth of the Arctic ice sheet, may have caused a transition event between 700,000 and 1.2 million years ago.
This event, known as the Middle Pleistocene transition, changed the length of the world’s glacial cycles (or periods between “ice ages”) from about 41,000 years to about 100,000 years.
By studying historical climate and ice sheet records, the researchers found that between 1.25 million and 2 million years ago, the growth of the Antarctic ice sheet and southern sea ice led to cooling at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere and the transport of more moisture to the Northern Hemisphere.
This led to rapid growth of the northern ice sheets, which in turn may have triggered the Middle Pleistocene transition, changing the length of the Earth’s cycles between warmer and colder periods.
Post time: Feb-07-2025
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