A Possible Marine Mechanism for Internally Generated Long-Period Climate Cycles

Abstract

By reinterpreting the “sea-ice extent” discussed in a recently proposed model of auto-oscillatory climatic change (Saltzman et al., 1981) to represent high-inertia grounded and shelf sea ice forms, instead of thinner marine ice forms, it is possible for the model to yield a much longer period of auto-oscillation, perhaps as much as 100 000 years (the dominant period of ice volume variations revealed by deep-sea ocean cores). The physical basis of the model can, in principle, be tested by future evidence regarding the long-term variations of bulk ocean temperature and atmospheric CO₂ concentration.