Julie Richey, a USF-St. Petersburg climate change researcher, used samples of deep-sea sediment from the Gulf of Mexico to tell the story of climate, and glean information about fluctuations of temperature at the Gulf's surface.
What she found was evidence of a "Little Ice Age" that occurred more than 350 years ago and caused the Gulf to cool by 2-3 degrees.
Her findings, published in
Geophysical Research Letters, point to a much more dramatic impact for climate change in the region than was previously believed.
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