The current issue of Nature Geoscience magazine features an article co-authored by Jenna Hill, associate professor of marine science at Coastal Carolina University's Center for Marine and Wetland Studies, about her research on iceberg activity along the Atlantic coast during the last ice age. The study, which is attracting significant attention in the scientific community, contributes new information about climate and ocean circulation patterns.

The article, co-written with Alan Condron of the Climate System Research Center of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, describes their study of "iceberg scours," the grooves and pits that were made by icebergs as they scraped the bottom of the seafloor along the southeastern U.S. coast approximately 15,000 to 18,000 years ago.

Iceberg scours were discovered off the South Carolina coast in 2008. Hill and Condron have tracked the scours as far as southern Florida. Their research suggests that these icebergs were extremely large, similar in size to the icebergs breaking off from Greenland today.

Hill and Condron used a high-resolution numerical model that describes ocean circulation during the last ice age. The model shows that meltwater from the North American ice sheet would have regularly reached the latitude of South Carolina during the winter season, indicating that icebergs would have been a regular occurrence along the coast here.

The model also shows that large-volume meltwater floods would have been required to transport the icebergs to southern Florida. These large flood events would have produced colder and fresher nearshore surface ocean currents, causing a 180-degree reversion of the typically northward-flowing Gulf Stream.

According to Hill, the study shows that "the mechanisms of climate change and ocean currents are more complex than we previously thought. It helps us understand how future ice sheet melt from Greenland may affect global climate."

The full article may be accessed at nature.com/ngeo/index.html.