date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:19:28 +0100 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: Science paper to: "Ogden Annie Ms \(MAC\)" , "Briffa Keith Prof \(ENV\)" Annie, We were both away yesterday. Keith is still. I'm back though and will be here tomorrow. Away all next week, by the way. I can see how the sentences in the abstract will be easily misused. Article has nothing to do with the present though - lots of features 18,000 years ago were quite different! Cheers Phil At 14:59 26/09/2007, Ogden Annie Ms \(MAC\) wrote: Dear Phil and Keith, Please see message below re attached a paper from Science which Chemistry World is asking if you would comment on. I gather you are both out of the office today so have told the journalist that you are unlikely to pick this up in time - but, on the offchance that you do, please feel free to send your comment to Simon direct. Best, Annie ------------------------------- Annie Ogden, Head of Communications, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ. Tel:+44 (0)1603 592764 [1]http://comm.uea.ac.uk/press ............................................ ___________________________________________________________________________________ From: Simon Hadlington [[2] mailto:simon@hadlington.plus.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 2:08 PM To: Press Office Subject: fao Annie Importance: High Annie re Chemistry World. here is the embargoed paper that is due to appear on the science website on friday and below is the press blurb that came with it. Chemistry World will be running a piece on the work and it would be very nice to have a few sentences from an independent third party - ie hopefully someone from your climate change research centre - to say why the work is significant. I'm happy to speak with someone or else equally happy to receive four or five sentences in an email. Presumably the work could be grist to the mill of the global warming sceptics - is there any reason why it shouldn't be? Chemistry World wants to get something out to coincide with the embargo being lifted, so really I'd need something by 10am at the latest tomorrow morning. If you could let me know within the next couple of hours if you've found anyone that would be great. thanks best wishes Simon Simon Hadlington freelance science journalist Derwent House Main Street Thorganby York YO19 6DA [3]http://www.eurekalert.org/emb_releases/2007-09/uosc-cdd092507.php Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown, says study in Science. Lowell Stott, professor of earth sciences, University of Southern California Click here for more information. Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records. There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change, said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express. You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages. Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown but was not its main cause. The study does not question the fact that CO2 plays a key role in climate. Lowell Stott, professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California, examines a sediment core. Click here for more information. I dont want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesnt affect climate, Stott cautioned. It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change. While an increase in atmospheric CO2 and the end of the ice ages occurred at roughly the same time, scientists have debated whether CO2 caused the warming or was released later by an already warming sea. The best estimate from other studies of when CO2 began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago. What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO2, Stott said. But where did this energy come from" Evidence pointed southward. Waters salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote. This water then was transported northward over 1,000 years via well-known deep-sea currents, a conclusion supported by carbon-dating evidence. In addition, the researchers noted that deep-sea temperature increases coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice, both occurring 19,000 years ago, before the northern hemispheres ice retreat began. Finally, Stott and colleagues found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increased springtime solar radiation over Antarctica, suggesting this might be the energy source. As the sun pumped in heat, the warming accelerated because of sea-ice albedo feedbacks, in which retreating ice exposes ocean water that reflects less light and absorbs more heat, much like a dark T-shirt on a hot day. In addition, the authors model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, also accelerating the warming. The link between the sun and ice age cycles is not new. The theory of Milankovitch cycles states that periodic changes in Earths orbit cause increased summertime sun radiation in the northern hemisphere, which controls ice size. However, this study suggests that the pace-keeper of ice sheet growth and retreat lies in the southern hemispheres spring rather than the northern hemispheres summer. The conclusions also underscore the importance of regional climate dynamics, Stott said. Here is an example of how a regional climate response translated into a global climate change, he explained. Stott and colleagues arrived at their results by studying a unique sediment core from the western Pacific composed of fossilized surface-dwelling (planktonic) and bottom-dwelling (benthic) organisms. These organisms foraminifera incorporate different isotopes of oxygen from ocean water into their calcite shells, depending on the temperature. By measuring the change in these isotopes in shells of different ages, it is possible to reconstruct how the deep and surface ocean temperatures changed through time. If CO2 caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead. The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms, Stott said. The complexities have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future. ### Stotts collaborators were Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii and Robert Thunell of the University of South Carolina. Stott was supported by the National Science Foundation and Timmerman by the International Pacific Research Center. Stott is an expert in paleoclimatology and was a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also recently co-authored a paper in Geophysical Research Letters tracing a 900-year history of monsoon variability in India. The study, which analyzed isotopes in cave stalagmites, found correlations between recorded famines and monsoon failures, and found that some past monsoon failures appear to have lasted much longer than those that occurred during recorded history. The ongoing research is aimed at shedding light on the monsoons poorly understood but vital role in Earths climate. Sciences press release Warming >From High to Low: Analysis of a new sea-sediment core in the Pacific suggests that the warming that followed the last glacial period began in the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere before sweeping into the tropics. The findings could help sort out the sequence of climate changes underlying the dramatic switch that turned an ice age into today's interglacial climate, say Lowell Stott and colleagues. Carbon-14 dating of organic material in the core suggests that deep tropical waters in the western Pacific warmed up by about 2 degrees Celsius between 19,000 and 17,000 years ago, 1,500 years earlier than comparable warming in the tropical surface waters and 1,000 years before atmospheric carbon dioxide began to rise. The source of the tropical deep heat may have been an even earlier heat wave in surface waters closer to the South Pole, warmed by an increase in solar radiation at the hemisphere's higher latitudes. ARTICLE #23: "Southern Hemisphere and Deep Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise and Tropical Warming," by L. Stott at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA; A. Timmermann at University of Hawaii in Honolulu, HI; R. Thunell at University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC. CONTACT: Lowell Stott at +1-213-740-5120 (phone), or stott@usc.edu (email) Ananyo Bhattacharya PhD Acting Deputy Editor, Chemistry World Tel: +44 (0)1223 432 184 Mob: +44 (0)7766 257 642 Fax: +44 (0)1223 426 017 Email: [4]bhattacharyaa@rsc.org Royal Society of Chemistry Science Park: Thomas Graham House Milton Road, Cambridge, UK CB4 0WF DISCLAIMER: This communication (including any attachments) is intended for the use of the addressee only and may contain confidential, privileged or copyright material. It may not be relied upon or disclosed to any other person without the consent of the RSC. If you have received it in error, please contact us immediately. Any advice given by the RSC has been carefully formulated but is necessarily based on the information available, and the RSC cannot be held responsible for accuracy or completeness. In this respect, the RSC owes no duty of care and shall not be liable for any resulting damage or loss. The RSC acknowledges that a disclaimer cannot restrict liability at law for personal injury or death arising through a finding of negligence. The RSC does not warrant that its emails or attachments are Virus-free: Please rely on your own screening. Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------