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Clocking Ocean Circulation Over One Million Years

Scientists at Cardiff University in Wales have clocked the speed of global ocean circulation over some one million years, helping to record how the Earth’s climate has changed over time.

Their findings will also help identify future changes in the climate and to what extent they are induced by modern human intervention -­ particularly the impact of global industrialization and deforestation.

The research findings are reported in today's issue of Nature.

An international research team led by Dr. Ian Hall of the Cardiff Department of Earth Sciences carried out its studies in the southwest Pacific. Here, a deep inflow creates the biggest deep current in the world, with the sea moving at about 15 million cubic meters per second.

By drilling deep into the ocean bed beneath the flow, Dr. Hall’s research team recovered "cores" of material that reveal layers of the sea bed’s history.

Analyses of these cores show substantial variations in the speed of sea flow originating around Antarctica that are consistent with ice age/warm age climate variation over the past 1.2 million years.

The operation of this current in the far distant southern Pacific Ocean is a major component involved in the ocean circulation loop that ultimately determines the climate in northwest Europe.

“The results have widespread implications for future work addressing the ocean's contribution to changing climate and, in particular, comprehensive modeling (of) the ocean climate system,” Dr. Hall said.

“Understanding the circulation of the global ocean is of major importance in our ability to predict and identify any human-induced global change and their consequences for our climate.”

The research was funded by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council and the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). The ODP is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries (including the UK) under management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), Inc.

Because of its unique location in one of the birthplaces of geological sciences, the Department of Earth Sciences at Cardiff University has consistently figured in frontier research in this subject for more than a century.

Ranked within the top ten Earth Science departments in the UK in terms of research, the department specializes in Marine and Quaternary Geology, Palaeobiology and Crustal Processes.

Its research facilities include a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer and palaeoceanographic laboratories. The Department offers a spectrum of undergraduate and postgraduate degree schemes covering the whole range of Modern Earth Sciences from environment through geology to exploration. It also offers a new scheme of professional training courses in marine geography and environmental and engineering geology.

(Reference: Nature, 23 August 2001 "Intensified ventilation of the Pacific Ocean in Pleistocene glacial times" by Ian R Hall (Dept of Earth Sci, Cardiff Univ), I Nicholas McCave, Nicholas J Shackleton (Dept of Earth Sci, Univ of Cambridge), Graham P Weedon (Dept of Environment, Geography & Geology, Univ of Luton), Sara E Harris (Sea Education Association, Woods Hole.))

[Contact: Dr. Ian Hall]

23-Aug-2001

 

 

 

 

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