Clam analysis reveals how the oceans affected climate over the past 1,000 years

Alan Wanamaker, working as a postdoctoral researcher from 2007 to 2009, was charged with beginning to compile a 1,000-year record of the marine climate for a spot in the North Atlantic just off the fjords and fishing villages of North Iceland. He was at Bangor University in Wales, working with James Scourse and Chris Richardson, professors in the School of Ocean Sciences. Before Wanamaker were thousands of clams, each specimen of Arctica islandica taken from 80 meters of seawater on the North Icelandic Shelf.

Those clams - dead and alive, some able to live up to 500 years in the icy water - were the research group’s sensors under the sea. Just like tree rings say a lot about growing seasons over time, annual growth increments in the shells can tell researchers a lot about ocean conditions over time. Read more.

Earth’s carbon-climate feedbacks varied in past warming episodes

Records from drill holes in the eastern equatorial Pacific indicate that Earth’s orbital eccentricity played an important role in controlling climate as the planet warmed.

Embedded within the Earth’s long-term cooling trend over the past 65 million years are several climate spikes—swift transitions to “hothouse” conditions—that had profound consequences for life. These spikes could serve as analogues for the future of our warming planet.

The cause of these spikes may in part be due to changes in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. But the complex feedbacks between the Earth’s climate and the carbon cycle have been hotly debated, and there is little scientific consensus on this issue. Read more.

Mammoth and mastodon behavior was less roam, more stay-at-home

According to research conducted by the University of Cincinnati, the fuzzy relatives of modern-day elephants liked living in greater Cincinnati long before it became the trendy hot spot it is today - at the end of the last Ice Age. A study led by Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology, shows the ancient proboscideans enjoyed the area to such an extent that they probably resided there year round and were not the nomadic migrants as previously thought. Read more.