Fine-tuning the Steps in the Intricate Climate Change Dance FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Relations Office December 7, 2005 New
scientific findings are strengthening the case that the oceans
and climate are linked in an intricate dance, and that rapid
climate change may be related to how vigorously ocean currents
move heat between low and high latitudes. The research, by
Candace Major, an investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution, was presented today at a press conference at the
fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
In the North Atlantic region, the glacial climate has been
characterized by abrupt climate swings between cold, or stadial,
conditions and relatively warm or interstadial conditions like
the present. Scientists have theorized that stadial-interstadial
transitions were most likely caused by changes in the strength
of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Thermohaline circulation, the global ocean circulation system,
is driven by differences in