Volcanic heat provided ice age lifeline
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THE steam and heat from volcanoes allowed species of plants and animals to survive past ice ages, a study showed yesterday , offering help for scientists dealing with climate change.
An international team said its analysis helped explain a long-running mystery of how some species thrived in areas covered by glaciers.
“Volcanic steam can melt large ice caves under the glaciers, and it can be tens of degrees warmer in there than outside,” said Ceridwen Fraser, the joint team leader from the Australian National University.
“Caves and warm steam fields would have been great places to hang out during ice ages.
“We can learn a lot from looking at the impacts of past climate change as we try to deal with the accelerated change that humans are now causing.”
The team studied tens of thousands of records of Antarctic mosses, lichens and bugs, collected over decades, and found that more species were found close to volcanoes.
The study was published in US journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
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