At https://phys.org/news/2025-07-frozen-arctic-ocean-life-ice.html … a new study at https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adu7681 … researchers have been testing the water during the Late Glacial Maximum – when a huge ice cap is thought to have covered a large part of the upper northern hemisphere – and it has come up with a surprise. They found no evidence for the presence of a thick ice shelf – as we have in the Antartic in the modern world. Instead, the study seemed to show the Arctic Ocean still had open water areas that allowed life sustaining conditions even during the harshest of cold periods within the last 750,000 years. That is a big range of time and perhaps it is the LGM that we are most interested in. Was it due to a north pole positioned on the Canadian Shield, in the vicinity of Hudsons Bay, or was there really a global climate drop in temperature? In the present day the North Pole is located in the Arctic Ocean – amid a lot of sea ice which goes up and down seasonally. It seems the researchers are saying it was the same in the LGM – and over a very long time before that. Physicist Peter Warlow, in a talk at an SIS Cambridge conference, said the ice during the LGM was confined to NE North America and the extremities of NW Europe. A qauite different scenario, However, the research, in this instance, took place at what they say was the Arctic-Atlantic Gateway. The actual sediment cores came from the Nordic seas and Yermak Plateau north of Svalbad. We may have to wait and see what the situation was in the eastern Arctic – between Russia and Canada.
At https://notrickszone.com/2025/07/03/new-study-indicates-the-north-atlantic-is-colder-now-than-any-other-time-in-the-last-9000-years …. here we are told abrupt shifts in North Atlantic surface temperatures have occurred routinely over the last 9000 years. At 6200BC for example, and 2200BC. Even in the Little Ice Age – or post Roman era. Decadal to centennial scale fluctuations ocurred. Since AD1900 sea surface temperatures have declined. Are they talking about average temperatures over decades or centuries – or individual years?
At https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/07/end-of-the-ice-age-exposed-ancient-stone-tools-found-on-south-africas-coast/ … during the Late Glacial Maximum, sea levels were lower, we are told, as a result of massive ice sheets in the northern hemisphere. The Knysna Eastern Heads cave, number one, is perched 23m above current sea levels. It sits on the southern coastline of South Africa with a fine view of the ocean. However, like Sundaland in what is now Indonesia, and the continental shelf systems of NW Europe and eastern North America, when it was occupied it looked over a landscape now submerged. The ocean was 75 km away. The cave once looked over what was probably a flattish lowland zone that contained enough prey for the occupants to live off.