Editor's Summary
2 June 2005
As Dryas ice
About 12,800 years ago, as the Earth was warming during the last glacial-to-interglacial transition, it was rudely interrupted by a millennial-scale return to near full glacial conditions. The cause of this 'Younger Dryas' cold interval has been hard to establish. It has been linked to a decrease in the rate of North Atlantic Deep Water formation and to ocean circulation changes due to surface freshening. The probable source of the freshwater involved has now been identified as a pulse of Arctic meltwater.
Letter: Arctic freshwater forcing of the Younger Dryas cold reversal
Lev Tarasov and W.R. Peltier
doi: 10.1038/nature03617
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (223K) | Supplementary information
