Are We Headed for a Thermohaline Catastrophe?
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Published:January 01, 2001
abstract
If we continue along the business-as-usual fossil-fuel-use track, we run the risk, late in the twenty- first century, of triggering an abrupt reorganization of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation. This conclusion is based on evidence stored in Greenland ice, continental-margin sediments, and mountain moraines that tells us that the large and abrupt global climate changes during the last period of glaciation were associated with sudden reorganizations of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation and on simulations carried out in joint atmosphere-ocean models that suggest that raising the greenhouse capacity of the atmosphere to the carbon-dioxide equivalent of 750 ppm would cripple the...
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Contents
Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change

Access A Broad Range of Paleoclimatic Studies. Current debates regarding potential man-induced modification of climate make this volume especially timely. Introductory sections address the major and minor physical controls, or drivers, that affect Earth's climate. Several chapters describe the naturally occurring range of variation of climatic conditions and illustrate past changes in global temperatures. Case studies show how ancient temperature conditions are determined, as well as new techniques that have significant potential as proxies for assessing paleoclimates. Several chapters demonstrate the magnitude and length of duration of numerous temperature variations, which occurred during geologic time periods.