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Global change

Oceanic action at a distance

Nature volume 419, pages 123–124 (2002)Cite this article

A Correction to this article was published on 26 September 2002

Glacial intervals are characterized by low levels of atmospheric CO2. A new explanation for that connection invokes nutrient export from the Southern Ocean to warmer waters at such times.

In the late 1980s came news of a spectacular discovery: that temperatures at Earth's surface and levels of CO2 in the atmosphere fell and rose in tandem during glacial– interglacial cycles1. Since then, Earth scientists have been busy seeking explanations for the connection and much recent thinking has centred on oceanic controls on CO2. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters2 and Global Biogeochemical Cycles3, respectively, Brzezinski et al. and Matsumoto et al. take this line of investigation a step forward. Together the papers provide a new hypothesis, elegantly supported by a set of palaeoceanographic evidence and biogeochemical modelling, that could help account for much of the reduction in atmospheric CO2 during glacial periods.

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Figure 1: Variation of nitrogen and silicon isotopes from Antarctic sediments over the past 350,000 years.

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  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JW, UK

    Raja S. Ganeshram

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  1. Raja S. Ganeshram
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Correspondence to Raja S. Ganeshram.

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Ganeshram, R. Oceanic action at a distance. Nature 419, 123–124 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/419123a

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