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Salty Ice Age

25 June 2019
Geology

You learn something new everyday. A sediment core from the Maldives is said to have preserved ocean water from the last Ice Age. How do they know? It is more salty than modern ocean water – go to https://phys.org/news/2019-05-scientists-ancient-seawater-ice-age.html … The thinking is that during the Ice Ages lots of water was locked up in glaciers and ice sheets. Therefore there was less water in the oceans as it is known sea levels in the North Atlantic were much lower during the Late Glacial Maximum. Less water means the salt in sea water is not spread around as much = salty sea water. The research seems to have begun on this premise and the fact they discovered extra salty water in their sediment core means that it must be Ice Age in date. The Maldives, as far as the Holocene is concerned, is heavily influenced by the monsoon belt. Is that also true of the Late Pleistocene?

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