Icing the North Atlantic

摘要

The North Atlantic region has experienced large, abrupt climate changes in the past, and similar changes occur in some models of the future. But there is disagreement as to whether these changes originate in the North Atlantic itself or are transmitted to the region from elsewhere. In their paper on page 373 of this issue, McCabe and Clark tackle the question with new data on the extent and movement of the British Ice Sheet, which covered an area around the northern Irish Sea towards the end of the last ice age. From these data, they argue that the advance and retreat of one of the great ice sheets feeding the North Atlantic, the Laurentide, probably caused some of the big climate jumps of the past.