The Arctic's Tropical Past

140Mandak262Jamuna writes "The BBC reports on findings that the arctic/polar region was tropical some 55 Million years ago." From the article: "Although the data tells us how the world changed from one with green house conditions to one with ice house conditions millions of years ago, it may also help scientists to predict what will result from the present changes in climate. Appy Sluijs points out that the data reveals that some of the climate models used to detail the Arctic's history got things wrong, and as they are the same models that predict our future climate they may need adjusting. " The reader pointed out that this may have had as much to do with continental drift as it did climate change.

Comments

Re:Not continental drift

[spun]

From the wikipedia article on continental drift: "South America and Africa are moving apart at an average of 5.7 cm per year, due to the seafloor spreading along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is comparable to the growth speed of a fingernail. The fastest recorded seafloor spreading takes place along the East Pacific Rise at 17.2 cm per year"

Using the lower number gives us a distance of 2850 kilometers in 50 million years. Not quite far enough for major climate change just based on distance. However, this amount of drift could severely alter the Atlantic Conveyor, a heat pump that moves tremendous amounts of heat from the equator to the poles. It is also enough distance to affect the amount of light available to trees.

It should also be noted that using the higher figure would result in a movement of 8600 kilometers, nearly the distance from the equator to the poles.