Kendrick Taylor, Desert Research Institute

University of Washington scientists in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences were part of a multi-institutional research team that has discovered a consistent link between abrupt temperature changes in Greenland and Antarctica during the most recent ice age. Using evidence trapped in ice cores from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet, the team from UW used analyses of oxygen molecules in the ice to uncover precise records of Antarctica’s temperature history. Along with ice cores previously analyzed at the UW and elsewhere that confirmed Greenland’s climate history, this data was used to compare temperature swings at both poles. Scientists found that Greenland was characterized by a number of large, abrupt changes in temperature, raising mean annual temperatures by about 5 degrees Celsius over a few decades. Meanwhile, temperatures in Antarctica showed an opposite pattern, with cooling by a small amount at roughly the same time. For the first time, research shows unambiguous data pointing to a type of “global seesaw” that consists of opposite changes at the two poles, suggesting that something is redistributing the heat between the northern and southern hemispheres. This was part of a collaborative study including UW’s Eric Steig, Bradley Markle, Spruce Schoenemann, Mai Winstrup, T.J. Fudge, Andrew Schauer, Edwin Waddington, and Howard Conway.