… but I figure I might as well start puttle little comments about ecological issues here, instead of on my diary.

So:

• Chris Colose, Revisiting the Younger Dryas, RealClimate, July 17, 2010.

The Younger Dryas was, among other things, a sudden cooling event in Europe shortly after the end of the last ice age. In only 20 years, the temperature in Europe dropped about 7 Celsius! It stayed cold for about 1,300 years. In Greenland, the temperature went down 15 Celsius. And then, at the end of the Younger Dryas, temperatures in Europe bounced back just as fast.

Sudden climate changes of this magnitude could have a huge impact on human civilization – just imagine glaciers in the Lake District in England. So, it’s worth learning all we can about this episode. Indeed, some people have suggested that freshwater from melting ice was what brought on the Younger Dryas, by disrupting ocean circulation in the northern Atlantic… which raises the specter of a repeat of this incident sometime soon! Luckily, the chances of that now seem very low. But it’s still good to understand this stuff.

If you haven’t learned a bit about Heinrich events (when icebergs drop lots of rocks on to the floor of the northern Altantic), the Bølling-Allerød warm period that came right before the Younger Dryas, the Last Glacial Maximum or LGM around 20,000 year ago, and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation or AMOC, Chris Colose’s comments may seem a bit dry and jargonesque. But I find them fascinating!

For one thing, I hadn’t known that people were finding evidence of Younger-Dryas-like episodes at the end of earlier glacial periods, suggesting that these events are in some sense routine, rather than something that requires a freak event like a comet impact to explain. (Yes, some people have argued that a comet was to blame.)