The term

The Turonian (93.5 to 89.3 million years ago) was one of the warmest periods of the Phanerozoic eon. It has been argued that there may have been several stages of continental ice growth during the period, reflected in both erosional surfaces and geochemical records associated with possible glaciation-induced sea-level falls.

The consequences of global climate change are profound, and the scientific community has an obligation to assess the ramifications of policy options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing CO2 sinks in reservoirs other than the atmosphere. Ocean iron fertilization (OIF), one of several ocean methods proposed for mitigating rising atmospheric CO2, involves stimulating net phytoplankton growth by releasing iron to certain parts of the surface ocean.

In a research by paleoceanographer Andre Bornemann of Leipzig University in Germany and his colleagues analyzed apparently unaltered Foraminifera picked from sediment core drilled from Demerara Rise beneath the western equatorial Atlantic. Following a classic technique, the researchers measured oxygen isotopes in the forams' shells. They found a sharp shift toward the heavier oxygen-18 isotope in both surface and bottom dwelling forams from 91.2 million years ago.

Last year, climate change scientists thought they had driven a silver stake through the idea that fluctuations in solar activity were behind global warming in the last century. Now, a high-profile team led by geophysicist Vincent Courtillot, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, has sought to raise the dead in a paper linking changes in Earth's magnetic field to temperature variations in recent millennia.

Climate is reaching its

Companies and countries are planning a series of controversial experiments to help determine if seeding the ocean with iron can mitigate global warming.