When audiences watched The Day After Tomorrow, they saw a fictional version of sudden and dramatic climate collapse. While the movie exaggerated the speed of those events, scientists know that Earth's climate really can change abruptly. During the last Ice Age, temperatures in Greenland surged by as much as 16°C within just a few decades. Massive waves of icebergs also repeatedly disrupted circulation in the North Atlantic during events known as Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events.
These kinds of abrupt changes, called millennial-scale climate events, reveal that Earth's climate system can reorganize much faster than would be expected from slow changes in Earth's orbit alone.
For years, researchers believed such rapid climate swings were mainly tied to the growth and collapse of large ice sheets. That left a major mystery unresolved. How could similar rapid climate shifts happen during greenhouse periods in Earth's history when ice sheets barely existed?
A new international study may now provide an answer.
Scientists Link Orbital Wobbles to Rapid Climate Changes
