Ulster scientist's work helps explain climate change

A Belfast scientist's discovery may have helped explain how sudden changes in world climate have shaped the Ulster landscape.

In a paper published in Nature, an international team, led by Dr Chris Turney of the Queen’s University School of Archaeology & Palaeoecology, has now suggested that the global warming and consequent surges of melted ice into the North Atlantic may have been triggered by long-term changes in a tropical Pacific Ocean current known as "El Niño".

While another school of thought believes the events were set off by changes in the circulation of currents in the North Atlantic, distinguishing whether long-term changes in the North Atlantic or tropical Pacific drive the global climate could allow scientists to better forecast major, and potentially damaging, shifts in weather patterns.

It has long been known that global temperature increases have led to melting ice caps, rising sea levels and violent weather disruptions, it is not really known why these climate cycles occur.

Temperatures in the North Atlantic region rose sharply about every 1,500 years contributing to the end of the last ice age. The retreat of the vast ice cap was responsible for many of the features that are characteristic of Northern Ireland’s scenery – such as low drumlin hills made up of deposits left by the melted ice and steep-sided valleys carved by glaciers.

The study carried out by Dr Turney with Professor Peter Kershaw, a palaeoecologist at Monash University in Australia, is based on data collected as part of ongoing research into Australia's historical climate, funded by The National Geographic.

Their research has been published in the latest edition of the science journal 'Nature'.

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