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Reports the absolute age of the Younger Dryas-Preboreal climactic shift, or the time marking the end of the last ice age in the North Atlantic, as being 11450 to 11390 plus-or-minus 80 years before the present. Dating methods used; Suggestion that the Younger Dryas may have begun as an anomalous meltwater event.

Reports on the findings indicating that meridonal atmospheric circulation intensity increased in the polar South Pacific and North Atlantic at the beginning of the Holocene rapid climate change event known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). How the date of 1400 A.D. was determined; How the LIA may still be effecting climate and weather patterns at the end of the 20th century; Possible causes of the LIA.

One of the most commonly accepted views of the relation between climate and ocean circulation is known popularly as the "global conveyer," meaning that deep water forms in the North Atlantic Ocean in large amounts during interglacial periods and in smaller volumes during glacial intervals, producing significant changes in the rate of large-scale ocean circulation. Much of the evidence for this belief is based on studies of the carbon isotopic composition of benthic foraminifera, i.e., those that lived on the sea floor over the last glacial/interglacial cycle. Researchers examine this proposition in more detail by comparing and contrasting carbon isotopic profiles from seven sites in the North Atlantic covering the last 27 glacial cycles, a time span of nearly 2 million years.