climate-debate

Arctic Ocean Warming Began Already In Early 20th Century, Meaning Natural Factors Strongly At Play, Not CO2

by University of Cambridge, Dec 29, 2021 in NoTricksZone

In a recent paper, scientists expressed their surprise that the Arctic had started warming already back in the early 20th century, 100 years ago. This, along with the obligatory CO2 climate warming lip service, is described in a Cambridge University press release.

Natural oceanic currents

The Arctic Ocean has been getting warmer since the beginning of the 20th century—decades earlier than records suggest—due to warmer water flowing into the delicate polar ecosystem from the Atlantic Ocean.

An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of   at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard.

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The researchers used geochemical and ecological data from ocean sediments to reconstruct the change in water column properties over the past 800 years. They precisely dated sediments using a combination of methods and looked for diagnostic signs of Atlantification, like change in temperature and salinity.

“When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr. Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity—it really sticks out.”

“The reason for this rapid Atlantification of at the gate of the Arctic Ocean is intriguing,” said Muschitiello. “We compared our results with the ocean circulation at lower latitudes and found there is a strong correlation with the slowdown of dense water formation in the Labrador Sea. In a future warming scenario, the deep circulation in this subpolar region is expected to further decrease because of the thawing of the Greenland ice sheet. Our results imply that we might expect further Arctic Atlantification in the future because of climate change.”

The researchers say that their results also expose a possible flaw in climate models, because they do not reproduce this early Atlantification at the beginning of the last century.