strait serves as a gate for cooler, less salinized water from
the Pacific to flow to the warmer and saltier Atlantic. Their
simulations found that without this flow, the climate of North
America fluctuates much more rapidly – in the span of a few
thousand years rather than some tens of thousands – and helps
explain constant temperature and ice sheet modulation between
116,000 and 34,000 years ago, a time of constant ice sheet
advance and retreat. In the past, this pattern was often
attributed to the Earth’s position along its 95,000 year orbital
pattern, but the NCAR researchers found that when correlated
with the temperature and ice data, the orbit could not explain
the rapid fluctuations. Instead, it occurred to them that
changes to the Bering Strait itself could have a large impact on
the entire region due to the changes it would bring to the
Pacific and Atlantic ocean currents. Their models indicate that
a slight change in the strait would adversely affect the
meridional overturning circulation, an ocean