"Understanding Late Cretaceous climate should inform debate about future climate trends and variability under greenhouse conditions," said Kemp, whose team's new findings are published in Geophysical Research Letters.
In both studies, Kemp and his collaborators analysed sediment cores from a marine ridge in the Arctic Ocean. These sediments date to the Late Cretaceous (69 million years ago) and contain fossil remains of diatoms, an important group of phytoplankton tiny planktonic marine plants.
The sediments contain alternating band-like laminae of two types, representing diatom growth conditions in the Arctic spring and summer, respectively. Each year is represented by a couplet of laminae, one of each type, which allowed the researchers to reconstruct ocean conditions at annual resolution.
"The presence of diatom laminae testify to ice-free Arctic summers during the Late Cretaceous, although there is also evidence of ice rafting by intermittent winter ice," said Kemp.
The researchers analysed two sections of sediment core covering between them a continuous period of around 1,000 years. By analysing the characteristics of the diatom laminae and measuring their thickness they were able to reconstruct climate-driven variation in ocean conditions both between years and over decades.
Their analyses revealed that the Arctic climate of the Late Cretaceous varied over various timescales with periodicities closely matching those observed in the modern Arctic. It therefore appears that the Arctic was subject to some of the same climatic influences in the Late Cretaceous as it is today, including ENSO, which periodically transmits equatorial influences to high-latitudes via ocean-atmosphere interactions.
"A modern Arctic lacking permanent sea ice should be subject to similar influences as it was under greenhouse conditions in the Late Cretaceous," said Kemp.
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| Contact: Dr. Rory Howlett r.howlett@noc.soton.ac.uk National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK) Source:Eurekalert |