Africa-Press – Rwanda. Researchers have warned that another “rapid and long-lasting regional climate change” may occur in the North Atlantic region if processes such as the loss of Arctic sea ice and the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet continue unabated.
Researchers from the University of Exeter managed to gain new insight into the environmental changes that occurred on Earth during the period of regional cooling known as the Little Ice Age (LIA) that started around the 13th century and ended in mid-19th century, being most pronounced in the North Atlantic.
The authors of the new study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications last month, studied shells of hard clams – marine bivalve mollusks that can potentially live for centuries – in order to try to assess how the ocean “evolved and responded to external changes over recent centuries,” as Science Daily put it.
During the course of their research, the team determined that the “subpolar North Atlantic system experienced a two-phase destabilization” during the transition from the warm Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age.
They also warned that, “if rapid loss of Arctic sea-ice, accelerating melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and associated export of freshwater into key convective regions in the North Atlantic continues, a subpolar gyre tipping point might again lead to rapid and long-lasting regional climate change.”
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