OCEAN waves washed away the last Ice Age after changing currents released masses of carbon dioxide, it is claimed.
Dr Will Gray and Dr James Rae of St Andrews University claim the findings could help predict global temperature spikes in the future.
They say the findings may also help experts understand the processes controlling the exchange of oxygen and the greenhouse gas between the ocean and the atmosphere.
And the pair warn that the heating process triggered by the sea change was far slower than that caused by human activity.
Rae, who co-authored the paper, said: “Although the CO2 rise caused by this process was dramatic in geological terms, it happened very slowly compared to modern man-made CO2 rise.
“Humans have driven CO2 rise in the atmosphere as large as the CO2 rise that helped end the last Ice Age, but the man-made CO2 rise has happened 100 times faster.
“This will have a huge effect on the climate system, and one that we are only just beginning to see.”
The claim is based on the study of chemical levels in tiny fossils.
The team examined a fossilised form of plankton called foraminifera to reconstruct the exchange of gases between the ocean and atmosphere at the end of the last Ice Age, when carbon dioxide levels above the waves soared.
They discovered large amounts of CO2 were released by the North Pacific around 15,000 years ago.
The release coincides with a time of rapid change in Atlantic currents.
Findings showed the North Pacific release was also caused by a change in its circulation and could explain a drop in oxygen levels in the Pacific Ocean at the same time.
That change, first noted more than two decades ago, is similar to that currently being observed by scientists.
Last week two reports surfaced into the slowing of Atlantic ocean currents, which is said to be at a 1000-year low.
The 15 per cent slowdown is equivalent to three million cubic metres of water per second and the water movement is connected to fish stocks, industry and weather systems.
Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany desribed the results as “bad news”.
On the new results, lead author Gray, of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Fife institution, said they tap in to growing scientific consensus.
He stated: “Last week we saw worrying new studies showing us the ocean currents in the North Atlantic are slowing down.
“In our study we see very rapid changes in the climate of the North Pacific that we think are linked to past changes in ocean currents in the Atlantic.
“This gives us an example of the way that different parts of the climate system are connected, so that changes in circulation in one region can drive changes in CO2 and oxygen all the way over on the other side of the planet.”
He went on: “The North Pacific Ocean is very big and just below the surface the waters are brimming with CO2.
“Because of this, we really need to understand how this region can change in the future, and looking into the past is a good way to do that.”
The full report was published yesterday in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.
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