22 research outputs found
Scratching the surface
During the last 500,000 years the British ice sheet grew and
decayed several times. During ice ages, ice masses grew in
the mountains of northern Britain, spread out and met up
to form ice sheets that covered the lowland landscape, including
parts of the continental shelf that are now underwater. The
position of the ice sheet’s farthest reaches on land are reasonably
well known, particularly for when the ice was last at its greatest,
during the last glacial maximum between 25,000 and 18,000
years ago. But no one is sure how far the ice reached under
today’s sea. Conflicting models argue for scenarios ranging from
ice advancing to where the continental shelf plunges to the deep,
to ice terminating only a short way offshore. If we can
reconstruct the volume of the ice-sheet, the corresponding drops
and rises in sea level and how the melt-water affected the major
current in the North Atlantic (the thermohaline circulation), we
will better understand how the oceans, atmosphere and frozen
environment interact as a system, and so better understand
worldwide environmental change