The rise mountains along the Southeast Asian island arc (IMAGE)

University of California - Berkeley

The rise mountains along the Southeast Asian island arc

Caption

This image shows how the shorelines and areas of islands in the Southeast Asian island arc, from Sumatra on the left to New Guinea on the right, increased over the past 15 million years as they emerged from the ocean. A significant increase in area over the past 5 million years is coincident with cooling and the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. A new analysis indicates that the rise of these tropical mountains led to a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide that drove this cooling.

Credit

Image courtesy of Nicholas Swanson-Hysell

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