A new study released today by Nature proves further that global climate fluctuates naturally. The paper, written by scientists Stijn De Schepper, Michael Schreck, Kristina Beck, Jens Matthiessen, Kristen Fahl and Gunn Mangerud concludes that a movement in the Nordic Sea that began 4.5 million years ago during the Pilocene brought the North Atlantic Deep Water to its ultimate potential, and made the region a crucial part of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and the key to global climate variability. The North Atlantic Deep Water is one of two bodies on our planet that regulate water temperature. Via a process of filtering of the warm waters of the Southern hemisphere and shooting them up the Atlantic, the basin holds one of the richest ocean areas in nutrients and a high salinity and chlorofluorocarbons.
In other words, the Nordic Seas have been causing changes in temperature of the oceans and therefore of the world not only due to interaction with anthropogenic elements like greenhouse gasses, but because of interaction with the other oceans. Climate change has been happening for millions of years, and it seems we are too quick to point fingers at each other when change has always been an inevitable part of how planet Earth works.
Just like that comet came for the dinosaurs, something might come for us.
Be it another space object or the planet slowly becoming uninhabitable, the Earth never stops changing. The paper, published this week, concludes that dude to several gateway reconfigurations in the Central American Seaway and the Bering Strait 4.5 million years ago, the Nordic seas developed a strong east-west surface water temperature gradient.
This caused the glacial caps to form in Greenland, decreased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and intensified the formation of the North Atlantic Deep Water, and makes the Nordic Seas a pivotal region for the way global climate operates and changes. In fact, the way that the Nordic Seas has managed to gain such influence in the temperatures of the Earth are not caused by evolution; it is more likely that this was caused by changes in Pacific–Atlantic oceanic gateway configurations.
In Other Words, It’s Not Just Us
Carbon Dioxide is a natural component of our planet. Climate change is more regional than global, as we live in a world that is always changing. Predictions pertaining to meteorology are, first and foremost, predictions. Though it is our duty as the inhabitants of this planet to protect it and reduce any changes for damage, it is important to also understand that there are some things that, no matter how solid the science seems, cannot be proven as absolute fact.
Climate change and global warming are real, but not entirely man-made. While it is true that the Earth’s resources have seen a decline and many species have gone extinct, it is a negative change but it is not a new one. The planet may well be like a phoenix that burns out from flying for too long, and like it has done so far, it will be reborn again.
