Twenty thousand-year-old air bubbles have revealed that Antarctic temperatures during the last ice age were markedly different than what the leading science once suggested.
Twenty thousand-year-old air bubbles have revealed that Antarctic temperatures during the last ice age were markedly different than what the leading science once suggested. This is according to new research in which the University of Copenhagen played a significant role. The result means that current global sea level rise predictions will most likely need to be revised.
As researchers seek to piece together a puzzle of how much and how quickly climate change will cause the world's oceans to rise, conditions in ice-age Antarctica are particularly important. Indeed, today’s climate models are based upon reconstructions of past climate events.
A new research result, in which the University of Copenhagen plays an important role, demonstrates that East Antarctica, which makes up the majority of the continent, was far less cold during the last ice age 20,000 years ago than the science once suggested. Specifically, temperatures were 4-5 degrees colder than now and not 9 degrees colder, as has been presumed for decades. The results have just been published in the journal Science.
"This marks the first time that we’ve had a clear and consistent answer as to what ice age temperatures in Antarctica were like. It demonstrates that both the temperatures and thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet were markedly different from what the accepted science once suggested, which is what we’ve based our climate models on," explains co-author Anders Svensson, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute.
Read more at University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science
Image: Anders Svensson inspecting an ice core in Greenland (Photo Credit: NEEM).
