Ice Age that Began in Very Warm Jurassic Had Nothing To Do With Carbon Dioxide Depletion, Scientists Say

BALTIMORE, Maryland January 23, 2016 - A stunning discovery by scientists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark has set the world of paleoclimatology on its collective head.  As reported by the web page "Sci-News," it has been determined that an ice age that started abruptly in the middle of a virtual greenhouse world was caused, not by a depletion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but instead by a large volcanic eruption beneath the northern oceans that prevented warm water from the equatorial areas to flow through to the arctic.  Without the warm ocean currents flowing to the north pole, the Jurassic World began a period of pronounced cooling that led to a prolonged ice age.

The Scientific team making the discovery was led by Christoph Korte of the University of Copenhagen.  According to Sci-News, the Korte team found that the world-wide cooling that triggered the ice age beginning 174 million years ago coincided with a massive volcanic event, the North Sea Dome, which restricted the flow of seawater and the associated heat that it carried from the equator towards the North Pole region.

“We tend to think of the Jurassic as a warm greenhouse world where high temperatures were governed by high atmospheric carbon dioxide contents,” said team member Prof. Stephen Hesselbo, of the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom.

The Sci-News report can be found at http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/ paleoclimatology/causes-behind-jurassic-ice-age-03511.html

The Sci-News site is no refuge for those doubting that climate change is taking place.  The same page carries a new story that claims the past century is the warmest in the last 120,000 years.  Still, when leading scientists say that historical climate change leading to an ice age occurred despite high carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is a newsworthy event.

According to Sci-News, the researchers spent ten years constructing a record of seawater temperature change using fossil bivalve and brachiopod shells.

They found that during the same period that the North Sea Dome event occurred, the planet experienced a significant and fast cooling in temperature.  The ice age lasted "many millions of years," according to scientists.  The topography and geography of the world was vastly different at the time of these events.  For instance, the split of South America away from Africa had just begun.  

Sci-News reports that the Scientific Team led by Dr. Korte orginally published their findings in the scientific journal "Nature Communications."