Rise in temperatures and CO2 follow each other closely in climate change
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2012/2012.7/rise_in_temperatures_and_co2/[font face=Serif]2012-07-23
[font size=5]Rise in temperatures and CO2 follow each other closely in climate change[/font]
[font size=4]The greatest climate change the world has seen in the last 100,000 years was the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric CO[font size="1"]2[/font] follow each other closely in terms of time. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Climate of the Past.[/font]
[font size=3]In the warmer climate the atmospheric content of CO[font size="1"]2[/font] is naturally higher. The gas CO[font size="1"]2[/font] (carbon dioxide) is a green-house gas that absorbs heat radiation from the Earth and thus keeps the Earth warm. In the shift between ice ages and interglacial periods the atmospheric content of CO[font size="1"]2[/font] helps to intensify the natural climate variations.
It had previously been thought that as the temperature began to rise at the end of the ice age approximately 19,000 years ago, an increase in the amount of CO[font size="1"]2[/font] in the atmosphere followed with a delay of up to 1,000 years.
Our analyses of ice cores from the ice sheet in Antarctica shows that the concentration of CO[font size="1"]2[/font] in the atmosphere follows the rise in Antarctic temperatures very closely and is staggered by a few hundred years at most, explains Sune Olander Rasmussen, Associate Professor and centre coordinator at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-1213-2012