Climate Patterns (IMAGE)
Caption
Scientists are unraveling a chain of events that led to large-scale warmings and coolings across the Northern Hemisphere during past ice ages. As ice sheets expanded, water levels dropped in the narrow Bering Strait (left) and cut off the flow of relatively fresh water from the northern Pacific through the Arctic into the saltier Atlantic. This altered ocean currents, increasing the flow of Atlantic water northward from the tropics and producing warming in the north Atlantic (right, shown in dark red) that melted ice sheets and affected climate patterns and sea levels across much of the world.
Credit
Courtesy <i>Nature</i>, modified by UCAR
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