Earth scientists are attempting to predict the future impacts of climate change by reconstructing the past behavior of Arctic climate and ocean circulation.

A study reported in today's issue of Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods.

Even though the Cretaceous Period ended more than 65 million years ago, clues remain about how the ocean water circulated at that time. Measuring a chemical tracer in samples of ancient fish scales, bones and teeth, University of Missouri and University of Florida researchers have studied circulation in the Late Cretaceous North Atlantic Ocean.

Driven by the wind, the highly energetic circulation patterns of the upper ocean play important roles in the global distribution of heat and nutrients. Despite this importance, many aspects of upper ocean dynamics are poorly known, especially how its variability is characterized by the interaction of different types of motion and scales.

Zigzagging some 60,000 kilometers across ocean floors, earth’s system of mid-ocean ridges plays a pivotal role in many workings of the planet, from its plate-tectonic movements to heat flow from the interior, and the chemistry of rock, water and air.

The senior science advisor to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has called for the establishment of a Southern Hemisphere network of deep ocean moorings to detect any change in ocean circulation that may adversely influence global climate.

Records from ice cores show that around 8,200 years ago the Northern Hemisphere's climate abruptly cooled. Many scientists link this event to the final drainage of Lake Agassiz, a large glacial lake covering much of central Canada that formed at the foot of North America's continental glaciers.

More than a mile beneath the Atlantic’s surface, roughly halfway between New York and Portugal, seawater rushing through the narrow gullies of an underwater mountain range much as winds gust between a city’s tall buildings is generating one of the most turbulent areas ever observed in the deep ocean.

Purdue University researchers have found evidence that tropical cyclones and hurricanes play an important role in the ocean circulation patterns that transport heat and maintain the climate of North America and Europe.

A study released today provides some of the first solid evidence that warming-induced changes in ocean circulation at the end of the last Ice Age caused vast quantities of ancient carbon dioxide to belch from the deep sea into the atmosphere. Scientists believe the carbon dioxide (CO2) releases helped propel the world into further warming.

Scientists have discovered how ocean circulation is working in the current that flows around Antarctica by tracing the path of helium from underwater volcanoes. The details are published in Nature this week.