800,000 Years of Abrupt Climate Variability
Abstract
We constructed an 800,000-year synthetic record of Greenland climate variability based on the thermal bipolar seesaw model. Our Greenland analog reproduces much of the variability seen in the Greenland ice cores over the past 100,000 years. The synthetic record shows strong similarity with the absolutely dated speleothem record from China, allowing us to place ice core records within an absolute timeframe for the past 400,000 years. Hence, it provides both a stratigraphic reference and a conceptual basis for assessing the long-term evolution of millennial-scale variability and its potential role in climate change at longer time scales. Indeed, we provide evidence for a ubiquitous association between bipolar seesaw oscillations and glacial terminations throughout the Middle to Late Pleistocene.
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References and Notes
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Science
Volume 334 | Issue 6054
21 October 2011
21 October 2011
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Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Submission history
Received: 31 January 2011
Accepted: 26 August 2011
Published in print: 21 October 2011
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments: We thank the authors of all of the studies cited here for making their results available for this work. Supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize (S.B.), Natural Environment Research Council (UK) awards NE/F002734/1 and NE/G004021/1 (S.B.), and NSF grants 0502535 and 1103403 (R.L.E.). This study is also part of the British Antarctic Survey Polar Science for Planet Earth Programme, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (UK).
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