Glaciers Morph Lickety-Split as Climate Changes

Arctic glaciers grew rapidly in response to sudden climate change8,200 years ago, a new study finds.

The study suggests that ice sheets such as those covering Greenland can quickly react to short-term climate shifts, said lead researcherNicolás Young, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Ice sheets are very sensitive to modest changes in temperature," Young told LiveScience. "You don't need thousands of years of increasing or decreasing temperatures. A really quick temperature change will also trigger a response."

The climate switch investigated by Young and his co-authors is a brief cooling period that lasted only 150 years, with temperatures dropping 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in just 20 years.

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