Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Sea Ice and Global Climate

Wallace Broecker

Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University

Large-scale sea ice cover in the northern Atlantic induced by a conveyor shutdown appears to account for both the profound Younger Dryas cooling of Greenland and northern Europe and the far field impacts of this cold snap. Question: Could the ongoing greenhouse warming bring about a repeat?

Adkins and Schrag have shown that much expanded Antarctic sea ice of glacial time led to the existence of an ultra-salty water mass and hence impacts thermohaline circulation. Question: Could the ongoing greenhouse warming reduce southern sea ice extent (and hence the production of brine) and thereby alter thermohaline circulation?

About the Lecturer

http://eesc.columbia.edu/faculty/broecker.html

Wallace Broecker