Abrupt climate change revisited

Taken together, evidence from east Greenland's mountain moraines and results from atmospheric models appear to provide the answer to a question which has long dogged abrupt climate change research: namely, how were impacts of the Younger Dryas (YD), Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) and Heinrich (H) events transmitted so quickly and efficiently throughout the northern hemisphere and tropics? The answer appears to lie in extensive winter sea ice formation which created Siberian-like conditions in the regions surrounding the northern Atlantic. Not only would this account for the ultra cold conditions in the north, but, as suggested by models, it would have pushed the tropical rain belt southward and weakened the monsoons. The requisite abrupt changes in the extent of sea ice cover are of course best explained by the turning on and turning off of the Atlantic's conveyor circulation. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.