Evidence Retrieved from Sediments in Remote Polar Basins
During the last ice age, when thick ice covered the Arctic,
many scientists assumed that the deep currents below that feed the North
Atlantic Ocean and help drive global ocean currents slowed or even
stopped. But in a new study in Nature,
researchers show that the deep Arctic Ocean has been churning briskly for the
last 35,000 years, through the chill of the last ice age and warmth of modern
times, suggesting that at least one arm of the system of global ocean currents
that move heat around the planet has behaved similarly under vastly different
climates.