A prizewinning research result

*Abrupt climate changes was chosen by the Danish readers of videnskab.dk as the Danish research result of the year 2008 and in France it was nominated for one of the tenth most sensational research results award  in the world of the year 2008 by the science magazine, La Recherche

Abrupt climate changes, the scientific result that was chosen by the Danish readers of videnskab.dk as the research result of the year 2008, has recently been nominated for one of the tenth most sensational research results of the year 2008 by the France science magazine, La Recherche. It was chosen among all research results of the world and within all scientific fields by the editorial staff of the magazine. The editorial staff had set as criteria that the results should be the most impressive and interesting of the year.

The article *Abrupt climate changes is a result of analyses of the ice cores from the NorthGRIP  carried out by researchers from the Centre for Ice and Climate together with an international team, and was published in the highly esteemed scientific journal Science and in Science Express.

Data show that the climate changed very abruptly and fundamentally in the course of very few years when the ice age ended.

The results are based on extremely accurate data from the examination of ice cores from NorthGRIP, Greenland. By analyzing the ice’s annual layers at very high resolution for substances like dust, oxygen and hydrogen, it appears that the climate changed, so to speak, from one day to another - as if someone just pushed a button. The measurements suggest that the climate changes were triggered by changes in the tropics and that the atmospheric circulation plays an important role.

The results from the measurements provided a revealing insight into what provoked the climate change and the processes that led to the changes. But more than that it is also important knowledge in order to improve the climate models that are used to predict the climate of the future.

* High-resolution Greenland Ice Core data show abrupt climate change happens in few years, SCIENCE, 321 (5889): 680-684 Aug 1, 2008