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Climate science

A grip on ice-age ocean circulation

Nature volume 485, pages 180–181 (2012)Cite this article

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Climate simulations based on an ocean model may hold the key to understanding why existing climate models have failed to deliver a clear picture of ocean circulation during the last ice age.

Simulating the climate of the most recent ice age is an important test for models that are used to project the climate of the future. But ice-age simulations have presented us with a persistent puzzle: simulations of a climatically crucial component of ocean circulation, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), are inconsistent between models, and are often at odds with observational data. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, Oka et al.1 describe a series of climate simulations based on an ocean model that points to the cause of these discrepancies, and that offers an explanation as to why the ice-age AMOC was apparently much more prone to abrupt transitions than the modern one.

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Figure 1: The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).

References

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  1. Jochem Marotzke is at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, 20146 Hamburg, Germany.,

    Jochem Marotzke

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  1. Jochem Marotzke
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Correspondence to Jochem Marotzke.

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Marotzke, J. A grip on ice-age ocean circulation. Nature 485, 180–181 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/485180a

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