Ocean warming caused by Late Ordovician glacial onset in a coupled climate-ice sheet simulation

Sun, Yudong; Liu, Yonggang; Wu, Jiacheng; Man, Kai; Yu, Haonan; Yuan, Shuai; Liu, Yizhang; Liu, Yue; Cui, Qi; Wei, Qiang; Hu, Yongyun

doi:10.5194/cp-22-1781-2026

Articles | Volume 22, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-22-1781-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-22-1781-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 10

Research article

|

01 Oct 2026

Research article |

| 01 Oct 2026

Ocean warming caused by Late Ordovician glacial onset in a coupled climate-ice sheet simulation

Yudong Sun, Yonggang Liu, Jiacheng Wu, Kai Man, Haonan Yu, Shuai Yuan, Yizhang Liu, Yue Liu, Qi Cui, Qiang Wei, and Yongyun Hu

Data sets

Data associated with: "Ocean warming caused by Late Ordovician glacial onset in a coupled climate-ice sheet simulation" Y. Sun https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21475880

Short summary

This study investigates the dramatic global cooling during the Late Ordovician, 440 million years ago. Our simulations reveal a powerful feedback loop: as the ice sheet grew, it generated strong, cold winds flowing down its slopes. These winds further cooled the continents, causing the ice sheet to expand even more. The super ice sheet led to a substantial global temperature drop of about 1.5 °C. Interestingly, while continents froze, the oceans warmed.