Researchers confirm role of massive flood in climate change
Climate modelers at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have succeeded in reproducing the climate changes caused by a massive freshwater pulse into the North Atlantic that occurred at the beginning of the current warm period 8,000 years ago. Their work is the first to consistently model the event and the first time that the model results have been validated by comparison to the record of climate proxies that scientists regularly use to study the Earth’s past.
“We only have one example of how the climate reacts to changes, the past,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, a GISS researcher and co-author on the study. “If we’re going to accurately simulate the Earth’s future, we need to be able to replicate past events. This was a real test of the model’s skill.”
The study was led by Allegra LeGrande, a graduate student in the department of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. The results appear in a paper being published in this week’s edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The group used an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model known as GISS Model E-R to simulate the climate impact of a massive freshwater flood into the North Atlantic that happened about 8,200 years ago after the end of the last Ice Age. As retreating glaciers opened a route for two ancient meltwater lakes known as Agassiz and Ojibway to suddenly and catastrophically drain from the middle of the North American continent.
Source: EurekaAlert.
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