March 19, 1999

Warming Is Found to Precede Carbon-Dioxide Rise in Interglacial Periods

By KIM A. McDONALD

Glaciologists know that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are typically low during ice ages and higher during the warmer periods in between.

But they have long been puzzled by the question of which comes first -- the rising global temperatures or the increasing carbon-dioxide concentrations?

An analysis of minute carbon-dioxide bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice for the past 250,000 years

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