Ice sheet collapse triggered ancient sea level peak »

An international team of scientists has found a dramatic ice sheet collapse at the end of the ice age before last caused widespread climate changes and led to a peak in the sea level well above its present height. The team found the events 135,000 years ago caused the planet to warm in a different way to the end of the most recent ice age about 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. The findings will help scientists understand the processes that control Earth's dramatic climate changes, said the leader of the study, Dr Gianluca Marino of the  Research School of Earth Sciences. "We knew the sea level had overshot its present levels during the last interglacial period, but did not know why. Now we for the first time can explain the processes that caused the sea levels to exceed the present levels," said Dr Marino. "Ice-age cycles may superficially look similar to one another, but there are important differences in the relationships between melting of continental ice sheets and global climate changes." The team, which includes researchers from ANU as well as the Universities of Southampton and Swansea in the UK, has published their findings in Nature. At the end of an ice age the continental ice sheets, ocean, and atmosphere change rapidly.