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Rapid global ocean-atmosphere response to Southern Ocean freshening during the last glacial

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posted on 2023-05-19, 12:19 authored by Turney, CSM, Jones, RT, Phipps, SJ, Thomas, Z, Hogg, A, Kershaw, AP, Fogwill, CJ, Palmer, J, Ramsey, CB, Adolphi, F, Muscheler, R, Hughen, KA, Staff, RA, Grosvenor, M, Golledge, NR, Rasmussen, SO, Hutchinson, DK, Haberle, S, Lorrey, A, Boswijk, G, Cooper, A
Contrasting Greenland and Antarctic temperatures during the last glacial period (115,000 to 11,650 years ago) are thought to have been driven by imbalances in the rates of formation of North Atlantic and Antarctic Deep Water (the ‘bipolar seesaw’). Here we exploit a bidecadally resolved 14C data set obtained from New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) to undertake high-precision alignment of key climate data sets spanning iceberg-rafted debris event Heinrich 3 and Greenland Interstadial (GI) 5.1 in the North Atlantic (~30,400 to 28,400 years ago). We observe no divergence between the kauri and Atlantic marine sediment 14C data sets, implying limited changes in deep water formation. However, a Southern Ocean (Atlantic-sector) iceberg rafted debris event appears to have occurred synchronously with GI-5.1 warming and decreased precipitation over the western equatorial Pacific and Atlantic. An ensemble of transient meltwater simulations shows that Antarctic-sourced salinity anomalies can generate climate changes that are propagated globally via an atmospheric Rossby wave train.

History

Publication title

Nature Communications

Volume

8

Article number

520

Number

520

Pagination

1-9

ISSN

2041-1723

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

Copyright 2017 The Authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Climate variability (excl. social impacts)

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