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Converging outlet glaciers from large ice caps on northeast Baffin Island, Arctic Canada. Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder, with funding from the National Science Foundation, were studying the causes of what's known as Earth's Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century.
Professor Gifford Miller and his team of researchers found that the Little Ice Age was caused by repeated, explosive volcanism and was sustained by a self-perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the north Atlantic Ocean. To reach these findings, the team radiocarbon dated dead vegetation that they collected from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin Island, as well as collect ice and sediment core data from the poles and Iceland and used sea ice climate model simulations.Image credit: Gifford H. Miller, INSTAAR, University of Colorado Boulder
