CO2 Release from Oceans at End of Last Ice Age Occured at Regional, Not Global Scale, New Study Says
26.08.2010 - Atmosphere & Space, Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Bi-polar
In a recent paper published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists lead by Rutgers Univsersity in New Jersey suggest that a massive carbon dioxide escape from the oceans could have occurred over a 1,000 year period after the end of the last glaciation. The paper shows that the last ice age witnessed a significant increase in the levels of atmospheric carbon-14 at a time when atmospheric carbon dioxide was on the decrease.
Previous research suggested that instead of being entirely released into the atmosphere in the Southern Hemisphere, some of the carbon dioxide flowed back into the Northern Hemisphere. However marine scientist Elisabeth Sikes and her research team disagree. Basing themselves upon data they gathered from ocean cores retrieved from the South Pacific and Southern Ocean, the team believes the release of CO2 occurred on a regional, not global, scale. During the last Ice Age, the slowing ventilation of the Southern Ocean caused carbon dioxide to build up, but as the ice began to melt, this stored CO2 was quickly released into the atmosphere until it reached an equilibrium state in the atmosphere. Their findings help to find better insight into the mechanisms controlling the release of CO2 from the ocean.
In the current configuration, however, human-induced spiking CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been raising levels of CO2 in the ocean. Although some people have suggested that we could pull CO2 from the atmosphere and somehow pump it back into the oceans, this study’s results indicate that global warming might result in another massive CO2 escape.
