Melting Polar Ice And CO2 absorption

Melting ice from glacial ice from the Greenland ice shelf dilutes the salinity of the North Atlantic, this slows the circulation of nutrients that feed the CO2 absorbing plankton and other organisms this leads the a drop in the ability for the seas to take up carbon dioxide leading to an increase in atmospheric CO2 and leading to a temperature increase of 16 degrees Celsius.

That scenario is the findings of a computer model by climate scientists Andreas Schmittner and Eric Galbraith of Oregon State University and Princeton University respectively. Not of our current situation but events of 65,000 to 13,000 years ago.

Why this is important is that one of the impediments to understanding how climate change will effect us now and in the future, has been our lack of understand what occurred in the natural processes of the past. A scientific paper published in Nature this week progresses our understanding by leaps and bounds. It has long been realised that the melting of the Ice at the poles effected the CO2 in the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age, but exactly how was little understood. The main contender of the theories was that salinity of the sea water was at the centre of this process, but exactly how? Well using a climate model that is normally used to predict our future climate, the scientists have been able to match exactly what happened in the past.

The important factor to remember here though is this natural process took place over a period of over fifty thousand years. The principals though are the same as what is happening now with the damaging man made climate change of today. Except what we are seeing is happening in a couple of centuries not over many millennia. Further just as the natural process speeded up near the end of the Ice Age, we are seeing the processes of Melting Sea Ice and Land based Glacial Ice increase.

We are looking at a very challenging future.

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