Scientific interest in White's discovery, from cores taken from coastal West Antarctica, has been heightened by a correlation between the time of the temperature spike and an abrupt rise in sea levels at about the same time, as documented by Australian National University research. Not everyone agrees. White's discovery, which all scientists caution needs verification, is providing as much fuel for sceptics as for committed believers in greenhouse warming. Professor Pat Quilty, former chief scientist with the Australian government-funded Australian Antarctic Division and now an academic with the University of Tasmania, says the Antarctic temperature spike counters doomsday theories of melting Antarctic ice sheets. Belying the beliefs of those on the global climate change bandwagon, the new Antarctic readings showed natural change could be as dramatic as anything produced by man, he said.
Nature imposes some pretty dramatic changes.
Etheridge says ancient Antarctic ice is proving that warming thousands of years ago took place after changing orbital tilts of the earth triggered a release of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the oceans. Greenhouse gas was part of the cause of warming even then, long before industrialisation increased the amount of gas clogging the atmosphere, he said. Now ancient Antarctic ice could help predict modern climate change, he said. It is the historical record which constrains our understanding of the climate system. AAD will re-examine a core covering an 80,000 years timespan drilled around 10 years ago at Law Dome, inland from Casey Station.