In a workshop on the topic ‘The Impact of Ice Sheet and Ocean Interactions on Climate Change’ at the Euroscience Open Forum 2012 conference conducted in Dublin, Dr Paul Dunlop, a scientist at the University of Ulster, discussed about how the Irish continental shelf, a perfectly preserved ice age landscape, may help uncover the climatic history of the north east Atlantic region and foresee the response of polar icesheets towards future global warming.
The workshop analyzed the data of a joint scientific study on Irish submarine territory in the north east Atlantic region by the Marine Institute, the Geological Survey of Ireland, and researchers from institutes across Ireland. According to the data, the Greenland, Norwegian, Irish continental shelves are perfectly preserved ice age landscapes.
Dr Dunlop informed that since ice sheets change with respect to climate, they are helpful in studying climatic change. They provide a rich geological evidence of their behavior when they grow and deteriorate, thus enabling researchers to uncover the timing and driving mechanisms that are instrumental for key climatic events.
The Irish continental shelf is a key region for climate research and the latest data on the Irish seabed will be helpful in better understanding the region’s climate history and predicting the response of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets towards future climate change. Latest advancements in marine geophysical technologies allow researchers to uncover the continental shelf’s glaciation pattern to rebuild former ice sheet activity. The new data will also assist in predicting how a quickly melting Greenland ice sheet will impact the climate of north Atlantic.
Northern hemisphere’s largest ice sheet is the Greenland ice sheet. Nevertheless, several key questions with respect to its size in the last glacial maxima, the drivers, rate and timing of its advance and retreat and the ice sheet by itself remains an area of research frontier in glaciology.
Source: http://www.ulst.ac.uk/
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