Carbonate structures resembling coral reefs were discovered in the Arctic Ocean by employees of the geological faculty of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, together with colleagues from the USA and Great Britain. Such structures can now be found in the equatorial and tropical regions of the Earth. The finds on the Mendeleev Rise near the North Pole are preliminarily dated to the Eocene epoch, approximately 56-45 million years old. They led scientists to an unexpected conclusion: many millions of years ago, a tropical climate suddenly arrived in the Arctic, and then it was just as sharply replaced by a deep cooling.
The results of this study are published in the high-ranking journal Gondwana Research, and it is important for understanding the climate history of the entire Earth in the Cenozoic (66-0 million years ago). As explained in the press service of Moscow State University, the study was carried out using geophysical seismic profiles. They help to study the structure of the earth's interior at depths of up to 10-30 km, where scientists cannot yet penetrate.
On such profiles, you can see how seismic waves are reflected and refracted on different surfaces. This is similar to the ultrasound method in the study of the human body, only in the case of studying the Earth, waves help to identify different types of subsurface structure: paleovolcanoes, carbonate reefs, paleochannels, oil reservoirs.
The results of this study can be used to study the climate in the history of the Earth and to develop models for its abrupt change. Based on the results of these studies, it is proposed to create a special new international scientific project to study abrupt climate changes in the Arctic over the past 56 million years.
Earlier in 2024, Russian scientists from AARI refuted the disappearance of Arctic ice by 2030. The University of Gothenburg stated that Arctic ice likely has a maximum of five years left to exist. But AARI explained to their European colleagues why the extreme melting of Arctic ice and the global flood are being canceled for now.
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