An international team of scientists, including those at the University of California, Irvine, has found that the water in the Pacific Ocean turned over during the last ice age, causing the layers to change. Thus, the shifts increased the absorption of carbon dioxide in deep waters, which led to a decrease in the amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere of that era. The results of the work were published in the journal Science Advances.

In the course of the study, the authors analyzed thousands of fossil sediment samples from around the world for traces of carbon-14 (radiocarbon). Some samples are 25,000 years old. Particles from calcium carbonate were converted into graphite, a pure form of carbon. The resulting material was then loaded into a mass spectrometer to obtain more accurate data.

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The panel concluded that the change in the circulation of water in the Pacific Ocean was a significant factor in reducing greenhouse gas emissions during the last ice age. The discovery could help oceanographers and others study the role of the ocean in climate warming and cooling mechanisms today and in the future.

Radiocarbon was not chosen as a key parameter by chance - it is an important indicator of the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. It is known that carbon-14 is formed in the atmosphere when cosmic ray neutrons bind with nitrogen and are transformed into carbon dioxide after chemical reactions with oxygen. After that, it enters the ocean in the same way as ordinary CO2.