Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Palaeoclimate

A balmy Arctic

Nature volume 432, pages 814–815 (2004)Cite this article

Analyses of sediments retrieved from a drifting ice island suggest that the Arctic Ocean may have been ice free and as warm as 15 °C about 70 million years ago. Therein is a challenge for climate models.

Various lines of evidence show that Earth's climate was much warmer during the Cretaceous period than it is today. Yet that evidence — fossil plants and animals, sedimentary features and geochemical indicators — is sparse, spotty and often inexact, making the magnitude and distribution of Cretaceous temperatures highly uncertain. In a testament to quality over quantity, Jenkyns et al.1 (page 888 of this issue) have produced a single new datum from one of the coldest spots on Earth's surface: their work clarifies the nature of extreme warmth in the Cretaceous, and reveals that the past was radically different from the present.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Average annual sea surface temperature for the Cretaceous predicted by an ocean–atmosphere climate model.

References

  1. Jenkyns, H. C., Forster, A., Schouten, S. & Sinninghe Damsté, J. S. Nature 432, 888–892 (2004).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Schouten, S., Hopmans, E., Schefuß, E. & Sinninghe Damsté, J. S. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 204, 265–274 (2002).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Schouten, S. et al. Geology 31, 1069–1072 (2003).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Tarduno, J. et al. Science 282, 2241–2244 (1998).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Morton, J. Fruits of Warm Climates (Creative Resources Systems, Miami, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Poulsen, C., Barron, E., Peterson, W. & Wilson, P. Paleoceanography 14, 679–697 (1999).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Otto-Bliesner, B., Brady, E. & Shields, C. J. Geophys. Res. 107, 10.1029/2001JD000821 (2002).

  8. Barron, E. Earth Sci. Rev. 19, 305–338 (1983).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bice, K. & Norris, R. Paleoceanography 17, 10.1029/2002PA000778 (2002).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Christopher J. Poulsen

Authors
  1. Christopher J. Poulsen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Poulsen, C. A balmy Arctic. Nature 432, 814–815 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/432814a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/432814a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing