The sudden climate collapse depicted in the movie The Day After Tomorrow is not as far fetched as we might have thought.
New research has revealed that the Earth’s climate has changed abruptly in the past.
For example, during the last Ice Age, temperatures in Greenland surged by as much as 16°C within just a few decades.
Massive waves of icebergs also repeatedly disrupted the North Atlantic during events known as Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich.
Scientists at China University of Geosciences found that the Earth’s climate could “swing wildly” on surprisingly short timescales.
“By studying ancient sediments from the Late Cretaceous, scientists uncovered repeating climate shifts tied to tiny changes in Earth’s orbital wobble,” a study report published by Science Daily this week said.
“These cycles may have repeatedly pushed the planet between humid and arid states every few thousand years.”
According to the report, the Earth does not rotate steadily. Its axis slowly wobbles over time like a spinning top. One full wobble takes roughly 26,000 years.
The new evidence links wobble variations to rapid climate change.
“These kinds of abrupt changes, called millennial-scale climate events, reveal that Earth’s climate system can reorganise much faster than would be expected from slow changes in Earth’s orbit alone,” the report said.
“For years, researchers believed such rapid climate swings were mainly tied to the growth and collapse of large ice sheets.”
The new research analysed sediment cores from China’s Songliao Basin that were deposited around 83 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period.
It revealed repeated humid and arid climate cycles that period, with a regular rhythm of roughly 4000 to 5000 years.
The full report is available here
