A warm and poorly ventilated deep Arctic Mediterranean during the last glacial period

Slow circulation in the cold Arctic The Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas together supply dense, sinking water to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The redistribution of heat by the AMOC, in turn, exerts a major influence on climate in the Northern Hemisphere. Thornalley et al. repo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Thornalley, D. J. R., Bauch, H. A., Gebbie, G., Guo, W., Ziegler, M., Bernasconi, S. M., Barker, S., Skinner, L. C., Yu, J.
Other Authors: NSF, European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Natural Environment Research Council, Australian Research Council, WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute (OCCI), OCCI, WHOI OCCI, WHOI J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund, Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2015
Subjects:
Multidisciplinary
Arctic Ocean
Nordic Seas
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa9554
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.aaa9554
Description
Summary:Slow circulation in the cold Arctic The Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas together supply dense, sinking water to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The redistribution of heat by the AMOC, in turn, exerts a major influence on climate in the Northern Hemisphere. Thornalley et al. report that during the last glacial period, those regions were nearly stagnant and supplied almost none of the water that they presently contribute to the AMOC. This low rate of flow into the Atlantic was probably due to an absence of vigorous deep-water formation in the Arctic Mediterranean as a consequence of the extensive ice cover there at that time. Science , this issue p. 706

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