Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
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Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#2PNAS paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/16/1321441111.abst...
Yale promo: temperatures in parts of Antarctica reached as high as 17 degrees Celsius (63F) during the Eocene, with an average of 14 degrees Celsius (57F) — similar to the average annual temperature off the coast of California today.
PNAS abstract: Here, we present multiproxy data from Seymour Island, near the Antarctic Peninsula, that provides well-constrained evidence for annual SSTs of 10–17 °C (1σ SD) during the middle and late Eocene.
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#3PNAS paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/16/1321441111.abst... Yale promo: temperatures in parts of Antarctica reached as high as 17 degrees Celsius (63F) during the Eocene, with an average of 14 degrees Celsius (57F) — similar to the average annual temperature off the coast of California today. PNAS abstract: Here, we present multiproxy data from Seymour Island, near the Antarctic Peninsula, that provid…
Where was Antarctica during the Eocene? Was it then parked over the South Pole?
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#4PNAS paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/16/1321441111.abst... Yale promo: temperatures in parts of Antarctica reached as high as 17 degrees Celsius (63F) during the Eocene, with an average of 14 degrees Celsius (57F) — similar to the average annual temperature off the coast of California today. PNAS abstract: Here, we present multiproxy data from Seymour Island, near the Antarctic Peninsula, that provid…
Where was Antarctica during the Eocene? Was it then parked over the South Pole?
Yes. Apparently Earth looked something like:
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#5PNAS paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/16/1321441111.abst... Yale promo: temperatures in parts of Antarctica reached as high as 17 degrees Celsius (63F) during the Eocene, with an average of 14 degrees Celsius (57F) — similar to the average annual temperature off the coast of California today. PNAS abstract: Here, we present multiproxy data from Seymour Island, near the Antarctic Peninsula, that provid…
Where was Antarctica during the Eocene? Was it then parked over the South Pole?
A Google search "Eocene epoch continents" brings up pages suggesting Antarctica's location then was similar to its location now. Thank you for asking that interesting question, as I remembered that in earlier deep geologic time, Antarctica was much nearer to the equator.
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where was Antarctica during the Eocene? Was it then parked over the South Pole?
A Google search "Eocene epoch continents" brings up pages suggesting Antarctica's location then was similar to its location now. Thank you for asking that interesting question, as I remembered that in earlier deep geologic time, Antarctica was much nearer to the equator.
It sounds like Australia's geographical relationship to Antarctica at the beginning of the Eocene contributed to Antarctica's temperate climate at the time. From Wikipedia[1}:
At the beginning of the period, Australia and Antarctica remained connected, and warm equatorial currents mixed with colder Antarctic waters, distributing the heat around the planet and keeping global temperatures high, but when Australia split from the southern continent around 45 Ma, the warm equatorial currents were routed away from Antarctica. An isolated cold water channel developed between the two continents. The Antarctic region cooled down, and the ocean surrounding Antarctica began to freeze, sending cold water and icefloes north, reinforcing the cooling.
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#7Missing from this press release, though not from the journal paper, is the unstable effect of ocean currents on water temperatures. The fact that the oceans have a straight shot around Antarctica at the moment generates a huge ocean current which blocks water from warmer latitudes making it south. Antarctica and South America were connected as recently as 30 MYa, blocking the circumpolar current and allowing water in the southern oceans to be much more mixed.
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#8I was thinking that hurricane type storms would have been even worse 50m years ago.
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#9It's also worth putting this in a bit of geologic perspective. The article mentions this, but doesn't explain it.
The Eocene is just before the earth went into a period of "icehouse" climate (that's still going on). During the part of the Eocene this article refers to, the earth was in a "greenhouse" phase, and global temperatures were much warmer than they've been any time since.
At that time (and throughout the majority of Earth's history), there likely weren't any significant ice caps on the planet.
On very long timescales, the Earth goes through periods of icehouse and greenhouse climates. We're currently in an "interglacial" within a period of icehouse climate that has persisted since the late Eocene. Most of Earth's history is dominated by long phases of greenhouse climate. During these, the global climate is more stable and much warmer. We don't have ice ages, and there probably aren't any ice caps at the poles.
The last period of icehouse climate began just after this, in the late Eocene. (Again, the "ice ages" you hear about are glacials and interglacials within a period of icehouse climate.)
Also, as other folks have mentioned, the Eocene is relatively recent, and Antarctica was essentially in its present-day position (the coals and other "warm-weather" rocks in Antarctica date from much earlier when it was near the equator).
Regardless, it is quite interesting that sea surface temperatures were as warm as this evidence shows! I just wanted to put this into a bit of perspective.
*Caveat to all of this: I'm a geologist and not a climatologist.
Re: Today’s Antarctic region once as hot as California, Florida
#10Why do they say "today's" Antarctic region? That just makes the whole headline confusing. The Antarctic was probably in the same location then, so let's just remove the word Today, and now it's way clearer.
Come on, give me that bloody headline writing job already!!