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Palaeoclimate science

Pulsating ice sheet

Nature volume 542, pages 298–299 (2017)Cite this article

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During the last ice age, huge numbers of icebergs were episodically discharged from an ice sheet that covered North America. Numerical modelling suggests that these events resulted from a conceptually simple feedback cycle. See Letter p.332

Understanding abrupt changes in ice sheets and climate is a long-standing issue in palaeoclimate science1. In the last glacial period, North America's Laurentide Ice Sheet episodically discharged large armadas of icebergs through the Hudson Strait into the North Atlantic2. This expulsion of fresh water in the form of icebergs not only raised the global sea level by a few metres, but also weakened ocean circulation in the North Atlantic and therefore affected climate. The cause of these 'Heinrich events' remains hotly debated. On page 332, Bassis et al.3 use an ice-sheet model to demonstrate that such events could have been triggered by relatively small fluctuations in subsurface ocean temperature — a result that has implications for the survival of present-day ice sheets.

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Figure 1: Icebergs in West Greenland.

MARTIN LÜTHI

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Andreas Vieli is in the Department of Geography, University of Zurich, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.,

    Andreas Vieli

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  1. Andreas Vieli
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Correspondence to Andreas Vieli.

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Vieli, A. Pulsating ice sheet. Nature 542, 298–299 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542298a

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