In 2013, a team of researchers set sail to the eastern Beaufort Sea in search of evidence for the flood near where the Mackenzie River enters the Arctic Ocean, forming the border between Canada’s Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories. From aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy in ice-covered waters, the team gathered sediment cores from along the continental slope east of the Mackenzie River. Above, the piston corer is shown in horizontal position, with the gravity corer hanging vertically, ready to be launched. (Lloyd Keigwin/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Thirteen thousand years ago, an ice age was ending, the Earth was warming, the oceans were rising. Then something strange happened – the Northern Hemisphere suddenly became much colder, and stayed that way for more than a thousand years. For some time, scientists have been debating how this major climatic event – called the “Younger Dryas” – happened. The question […]