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Antarctic ice-drilling reveals linked cycle of warming and cooling.
Researchers trying to understand sudden, seesawing changes in the Arctic's prehistoric climate have found some answers in an unusual place: buried in the Antarctic ice, half a world away. Their work could help to predict the future consequences of sudden polar warming.
By digging more than 2,500 metres down into the Antarctic ice, climate scientists have shown that changes at one pole influence the other. This 'climate seesaw' moves heat from south to north along the length of the Atlantic Ocean.
Similar studies from Greenland have shown that the Arctic climate can warm by as much as 16 °C in just a few decades. The results from Antarctica confirm a theory that these warming episodes, and their subsequent cooling periods, swing back and forth between the poles.
