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Ice Free Arctic Oasis

13 September 2021
Geology

At https://sciencenorway.no/arctic-climate-change-forskningno/an-ice-free-o… … researchers from Norway and the UK have been looking at polynyas – ice free openings between land ice and sea ice. These allowed life to flourish even at the ice sheet edge. They seem to have existed during the Late Glacial Maximum – when ice covered much of Scandinavia, 3 km thick in parts of Norway. In spite of that life continued to exist in long and narrow ice free gaps – on the assumption sea ice was still endemic where the current north pole resides. The evidence is based on sediment sampling from the Barents Sea to Svalbard and beyond. They found many biological remains in the sediments. However, when ice melt occurred at the end of the Ice Age polynyas ceased to form.

At https://sciencenorway.no/climate-change-ice-age/the-missing-link-that-tr… … what was the vector that set triggered the Ice Ages? Instead of looking at other options the authors simply feed their model with consensus assumptions such as the idea the poles can never move on their axis. That is of course like the old idea that continental drift was impossible as the crust could not move independently of the Mantle. However, they do come and say, 'it is a mystery as to how fairly small changes in solar radiation can lead to such dramatic shifts, like the ice ages. There must be other reasons that also play a role …' in reference to the Milankovich orbital cycle. They resort to change in sea ice build up as this is what goes into models, uniformitarian processes. We are told that fresh water from sinking icebergs with an origin in glaciers from Antarcitica, migrated to the North Atlantic. It led to saltier water in the Southern Ocean and fresher water in the North Atlantic. In turn this caused the ocean to absorb increased amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – reducing the greenhouse effect, pushing the earth into Ice Age conditions. Amazing how magical co2 has become.

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