Carbon 'burp' from deep ocean kick-started global warming at end of last Ice Age

[Ed Barrow]

A huge carbon "burp" from the sea may have ended the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago, scientists believe. The carbon dioxide was locked away in the deep ocean "repository" and as the Earth warmed it was released into the atmosphere causing global warming, it was said. It is believed that carbon dioxide was dissolved in the waters of the deep ocean during ice ages, and that pulses or "burps" of carbon dioxide from the deep Southern Ocean helped trigger a global thaw every 100,000 years or so.

The size of these pulses was roughly equivalent to the change in carbon dioxide experienced since the start of the industrial revolution. Throughout the past two million years, the Earth has alternated between ice ages and warmer climates. These changes are mainly driven by alterations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but they have been accelerated by changes on the planets surface. One of those is thought to be the huge storage and then release of carbon dioxide by the oceans.

"If enough of the deep ocean behaved in the same way, this could help to explain how ocean mixing processes lock up more carbon dioxide during glacial periods," said Dr Luke Skinner of the University of Cambridge.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7772399/Carbon-burp-from-deep-ocean-kick-started-global-warming-at-end-of-last-Ice-Age.html

[wtmusic]

1. It also took about 10 times longer than recent global warming -

on the order of 1,500 years instead of 150.

This sounds like more denier nonsense. The sharp spike in global warming since 1860 has absolutely nothing to do with "alterations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun".

:eyes:

[petronius]

2. I don't think so - it actually serves to counter one of the common denier talking points

Deniers like to complain that the rise in CO2 after the last glacial advance appears to lag temperature rise. This is because the solubility of CO2 in seawater diminishes as temperature goes up, so as the oceans warmed they released CO2 which exacerbated the warming. CO2 is thus a feedback as well as a forcing in global temperature.

This article seems to be providing detail about the end of the last glacial period, it isn't really saying anything about anthropogenic global warming in the last century (the bit about the CO2 increase during the industrial age appears to be for scale)...