Seaways play an important role in climate change

(Most of the climate change concerns focus on the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. But in a new study presented in the journal Science, a group of Rutgers University researchers have found that ocean currents also play an equally important role in regulating the climate of Earth.

In the study, the researchers said that the main cooling of the Earth and the continent of the Northern Hemisphere 2.7 million years ago occurred simultaneously with a diversion of ocean flow - heat pull and CO ₂ in the Atlantic Ocean, moving them across the deep sea from north to south until heat and carbon dioxide are released in the Pacific Ocean.

Rutgers scientists believe that the ocean conveyor system (deep ocean currents) changed at the same time with an expansion of the northern hemisphere's volume of glaciers as well as a significant reduction. sea ​​level. It was the Antarctic ice, they argued, cutting off the heat exchange at the sea surface and pushing it into deep water. They believe that this has caused global climate change at the time, not because of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The ocean currents also greatly affect climate change on the earth

"We think that is the formation of modern deep ocean currents - ocean conveyors - about 2.7 million years ago, and there is no major change in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causing a The expansion of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere , " said Stella Woodard, lead author and doctoral researcher at the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Their findings are based on samples of marine sediments between 2.5 and 3.3 million years old, providing scientists with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of climate change today.

The study demonstrates that variations in heat distribution between sea basins are important to understanding future climate change. However, scientists cannot accurately predict how the effects of carbonic currently being absorbed into the sea from the atmosphere will affect the climate. However, they argue that since many carbon dioxide emissions have been emitted over the past 200 years compared to any time in recent geological history, interactions between carbonic, variations in temperature and rainfall, and ocean currents will cause profound changes.

Scientists believe that different models of deep ocean currents were responsible for high temperatures occurring 3 million years before atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations were present and temperatures were higher than 4. Degree F. Researchers say: the formation of ocean currents has cooled the earth and created the climate we live in today.

"Our research shows that changes in deep-sea heat storage may be important to climate change as other theories - the activity of creating or reducing carbon dioxide concentrations - and potentially The ability leads to one of the key climate change processes of the past 30 million years , " said Yair Rosenthal, co-author and professor of marine and coastal science at Rutgers University.

Co-authors of research papers are Woodard, Rosenthal, Kenneth Miller and James Wright, both professors of Earth and Planet Sciences at Rutgers University; Beverly Chiu, a graduate student in earth and planet science; and Kira Lawrence, associate professor of geology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania.