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Background of a Geophysical Model of the Initiation of the Next Glaciation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Hermann Flohn
Hermann Flohn*
Affiliation:
Dept of Meteorology, University of Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany.
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Abstract

Evidence of (at least) five rapid hemispheric coolings of about 5°C during the last 105 yr has been found, each event spread over not more than about a century, as examples of a global-scale climatic intransitivity. Only some of them lead to a complete glaciation at the northern continents, others ended after a few centuries by a sudden warming (“abortive glaciation”). Starting from a modified version of Wilson's hypothesis of Antarctic ice surges, an air-sea interaction model with realistic geophysical parameters is outlined to interpret the sudden initiation of the North American ice sheet. Special attention is given to the Atlantic section, where the climatic anomalies during the last glaciation appear to have been significantly larger than in other sections.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 385 - 404
Copyright
University of Washington

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