Freshwater release and elevation loss affect climate during Heinrich events
A team of researchers around Dr. Florian Ziemen at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that Heinrich events, climate changes during the last ice age, were caused by a succession of the effects of two mechanisms: iceberg calving, having effects on the ocean, and ice sheet elevation loss, having effects on the atmosphere. Using a novel model setup, they were able to study the relationship between the two individual effects. They were the first to observe the succession of both effects in one simulation. Citation: Ziemen, F., Kapsch, M.-L., Klockmann, M., & Mikolajewicz, U. (2019). Heinrich events show two-stage climate response in transient glacial simulations. Climate of the Past, 15, 153-168. doi:10.5194/cp-15-153-2019 | ![]() |
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PalMod - Paleo Modelling
PalMod is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BMBF) to understand climate system dynamics and variability during the last glacial cycle.
Recent Highlights - PalMod Publication
How cold was Antarctica during the last ice age?
[August 2018] In a recent study by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute together with French colleagues temperature changes in Antarctica during the last ice age have been reconstructed. Ice core data and model results indicate a much stronger cooling of West Antarctica than East Antarctica during that time. Furthermore, the study enabled a new estimate of Antarctic ice sheet height changes during this past climate stage. The results of this study have been recently published in Nature Communications. |
Sea level fall during glaciation stabilized atmospheric CO2 by enhanced volcanic degassing
[Juli 2017] Throughout the last 800,000 years, Antarctic temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations showed a similar evolution. However, this was different during the transition to the last ice age: approximately 80,000 years ago, temperature declined, while the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere remained relatively stable. An international research team led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research has now discovered that a falling sea level may have caused enhanced volcanic activity in the ocean, which can explain the anomaly. The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications. | ![]() |