Earth Ice Age Dynamics: A Bimodal Forcing Hypothesis

Bimodal bilingualism and the frequency-lag hypothesis.

The frequency-lag hypothesis proposes that bilinguals have slowed lexical retrieval relative to monolinguals and in their nondominant language relative to their dominant language, particularly for low-frequency words. These effects arise because bilinguals divide their language use between 2 languages and use their nondominant language less frequently. We conducted a picture-naming study with h...

Is the Earth still recovering from the “Little Ice Age”? A possible cause of global warming

There seems to be a roughly linear increase of the temperature from about 1800, or even much earlier, to the present. This warming trend is likely to be a natural change; a rapid increase of CO2 began in about 1940. This trend should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years. Thus, there is a possibility that only a fraction of the present warming trend may be attributed...

Ice-sheet response to oceanic forcing.

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at accelerating rates, much of which is a response to oceanic forcing, especially of the floating ice shelves. Recent observations establish a clear correspondence between the increased delivery of oceanic heat to the ice-sheet margin and increased ice loss. In Antarctica, most of these processes are reasonably well understood but have n...

Wetland-dryland Vegetational Dynamics in the Pennsylvanian Ice Age Tropics

Evidence for external forcing of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation since termination of the Little Ice Age

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) represents a significant driver of Northern Hemisphere climate, but the forcing mechanisms pacing the AMO remain poorly understood. Here we use the available proxy records to investigate the influence of solar and volcanic forcing on the AMO over the last ~450 years. The evidence suggests that external forcing played a dominant role in pacing the AMO ...