Posted on 05/30/2011 6:22:03 PM PDT by neverdem
Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic. The temperature differences of that era, known as the late Eocene, between the equator and Antarctica were only half of what they are today. A debate has long been raging in the scientific community on what changes in our global climate system led to such a major shift from the more tropical, greenhouse climate of the Eocene to the modern and much cooler climates of today.
New research published in the journal Science, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scientist Miriam Katz, is providing some of the strongest evidence to date that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) played a key role in the major shift in the global climate that began approximately 38 million years ago. The research provides the first evidence that early ACC formation played a vital role in the formation of the modern ocean structure.
The paper, titled "Impact of Antarctic Circumpolar Current development on late Paleogene ocean structure," is published in the May 27, 2011, issue of Science.
"What we have found is that the evolution of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current influenced global ocean circulation much earlier than previous studies have shown," said Katz, who is assistant professor of earth and environmental science at Rensselaer. "This finding is particularly significant because it places the impact of initial shallow ACC circulation in the same interval when the climate began its long-term shift to cooler temperatures."
There has been a debate over the past 40 years on what role the Antarctic Circumpolar Current had in the underlying cooling trend on Earth. Previous research has placed the development of the deep ACC (greater than 2,000 meters water depth) in the late...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Impact of Antarctic Circumpolar Current Development on Late Paleogene Ocean Structure
Algore!... ALGore!.... AL GORE!!! where are you?
What changed 38 million years ago? That’s easy.
The evil oil companies and conservatives.
It’s not nice to fool around like you can out-heat (or out-cool) Mother Nature! [Thunderclap]
Significant Role of Oceans in Onset of Ancient Global Cooling
National Science Foundation | May 26, 2011 | Unknown
Posted on 05/26/2011 1:27:37 PM PDT by decimon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2725555/posts
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Unless they put jets on the planet to orient it or develop space transport and living technologies seriously at NASA or elsewhere, budget cutting seriously on crap UNIONS, then we will take them seriously on climate change and saving the planet and ourselves. The rest is garbage.
A windmill will not save us from climate change, it will be powered by violent climate, maybe, but it does not affect climate, period.
All this means is again, the SUN is the most important factor in global temperature changes.
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