Antarctic ice sheet could suffer a one-two climate punch

Antarctic ice sheet could suffer a one-two climate punch

5 years ago
Anonymous $L9wC17otzH

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-antarctic-ice-sheet-one-two-climate.html

Now, it turns out that variations in the axial tilt—what scientists call "obliquity"—of the planet have significant implications for the rise and fall of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the miles-deep blanket of ice that locks up huge volumes of water that, if melted, would dramatically elevate sea level and alter the world's coastlines.

Writing this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team led by Richard Levy of New Zealand's GNS Science and Victoria University of Wellington, and Stephen Meyers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison describes research that matches the geologic record of Antarctica's ice with the periodic astronomical motions of the Earth. Comparing the two records, the New Zealand and Wisconsin researchers recapitulate the history of the Antarctic Ice Sheet throughout most of the past 34 million years, starting when the ice sheet first formed.