The Bering Strait is a waterway that separates Russia from North America. It lies above the Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia (sometimes misspelled Beringea), a submerged landmass that once connected the Siberian mainland with North America. While variously described in publications, most scholars would agree Beringia's land mass included the Seward Peninsula, as well as existing land areas of northeast Siberia and western Alaska, between the Verkhoyansk Range in Siberia and the Mackenzie River in Alaska. As a waterway, the Bering Strait connects the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean over the polar ice cap, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.
The climate of the Bering Land Bridge (BLB) when it was above sea level during the Pleistocene was long thought to have been primarily a herbaceous tundra or steppe-tundra. However, recent pollen studies have shown that during the Last Glacial Maximum (say, between 30,000-18,000 calendar years ago, abbreviated as cal BP), the environment was a mosaic of diverse but cold habitats.
Living 0n the BLB
Whether Beringia was habitable or not is determined by the sea level and presence of surrounding ice: specifically, whenever the sea level drops about 50 meters (~164 feet) below its present position, the land surfaces. The dates when this happened have been difficult to establish, in part because the BLB is currently mostly underwater and difficult to study.
Ice cores seem to indicate that most of the Bering Land Bridge was exposed during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (60,000 to 25,000 years ago), connecting Siberia and North America: and the land mass was above sea level but cut off from east and west land bridges during OIS 2 (25,000 to about 18,500 years BP).
Climate Change and the Bering Land Bridge
Although there is lingering debate, pollen studies suggest that the climate of the BLB between about 29,500 and 13,300 cal BP was an arid, cool climate, with grass-herb-willow tundra. There is also some evidence that near the end of the LGM (~21,000-18,000 cal BP), conditions in Beringia deteriorated sharply. At about 13,300 cal BP, when rising sea levels began to flood the bridge, the climate appears to have been wetter, with deeper winter snows and cool summers.
Sometime between 18,000 and 15,000 cal BP, the bottleneck to the east was broken, which allowed human entrance into the North American continent along the Pacific coast. The Bering Land Bridge was completely inundated by rising sea levels by 10,000 or 11,000 cal BP, and its current level was reached about 7,000 years ago.
The Bering Land Bridge and North American Colonization
By and large, archaeologists believe that the Bering land bridge was the primary entryway for original colonists into the Americas. About 30 years ago, scholars were convinced that people simply left Siberia, crossed the BLB and entered through the Canadian ice shield through a so-called "ice-free corridor". However, recent investigations indicate the "ice free corridor" was blocked between about 30,000 and 11,500 cal BP. Since the northwest Pacific coast was deglaciated at least as early as 14,500 years BP, many scholars today believe this coastal route was the primary route for much of the first American colonization.
In addition, it is quite possible that the migrants lived on the BLB for several millennia during the Last Glacial Maximum. Their entry into North America would have been blocked by ice sheets, and their return to Siberia blocked by the glaciers in the Verkhoyansk mountain range.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human settlement in the vicinity of the Bering Land Bridge east of the Verkhoyansk Range in Siberia is the Yana RHS site, a very unusual 30,000 year old site located above the arctic circle.
The Bering Strait and Climate Control
A recent computer modeling of the ocean cycles and their effect on abrupt climate transitions called Dansgaard-Oeschger (D/O) cycles, and reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April of 2012 (Hu and colleagues), discusses one potential effect of the Bering Strait on global climate. This study suggests that the closing of the Bering Strait during the Pleistocene restricted cross-circulation between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and perhaps led to the numerous abrupt climatic changes experienced between 80,000 and 11,000 years ago.
One of the major fears of coming global climate change is the effect of changes in the salinity and temperature of the North Atlantic current, resulting from glacial ice melt. Changes to the North Atlantic current have been identified as one trigger for significant cooling or warming events in the North Atlantic and surrounding regions, such as that seen during the Pleistocene. What the computer models seem to show is that an open Bering Strait allows ocean circulation between the Atlantic and Pacific, and continued admixing may suppress the effect of the North Atlantic freshwater anomaly.
The researchers suggest that as long as the Bering Strait continues to stay open, the current waterflow between our two major oceans will continue unhindered. This is likely, say scholars, to repress or limit any changes in the North Atlantic salinity or temperature, and thus lessen the likelihood of sudden collapse of the global climate.
Researchers caution, however, that since researchers aren't even guaranteeing that fluctuations in the North Atlantic current would create problems, further investigations examining glacial climate boundary conditions and models are needed to support these results.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the About.com Guide to Populating America and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
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Hu A, Meehl GA, Han W, Timmermann A, Otto-Bliesner B, Liu Z, Washington WM, Large W, Abe-Ouchi A, Kimoto M et al. 2012. Role of the Bering Strait on the hysteresis of the ocean conveyor belt circulation and glacial climate stability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: In press
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