Strength and geometry of the glacial Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Work of EOAS graduate student Yiming Luo and seven colleagues, including Professors R. Francois and S. Allen, appeared on the Nature Geoscience website this week. They constrain the magnitude of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation during the last glacial maximum. Circulation depth has been known for many years to be shallower than today, but it has been much harder to estimate the volume flux of water circulating. Using isotope data and a model created by Yiming, it has now been shown that volume flux during the last glacial maximum must have been larger than it is now.