The anatomy of past abrupt warmings recorded in Greenland ice

Capron, Émilie; Rasmussen, Sune Olander; Popp, Trevor; Erhardt, Tobias; Fischer, Hubertus; Landais, Amaëlle; Pedro, J. B.; Vettoretti, G.; Grinsted, Aslak; Gkinis, Vasileios; Vaughn, Bruce H.; Svensson, Anders; Vinther, Bo M.; White, James W. C.

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22241-w

Cited by 39 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(132 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Comparison of δ 18 O ice and dust (mass, Ca 2+ ) records of the NGRIP ice core demonstrates that the average lag of dust versus δ 18 O ice is 1 ± 8 years for all D-O inceptions (Ruth et al, 2007). This synchrony of dust concentration and δ 18 O ice changes has recently been confirmed by higher resolution analyses of NGRIP and NEEM ice core data (Capron et al, 2021;Erhardt et al, 2019), indicating that the climate of continental dust sources and Greenland must have been coupled. However, the mechanisms of this coupled response over wide areas of the NH remain poorly constrained.…”

mentioning

confidence: 70%

Greenland Ice Core Record of Last Glacial Dust Sources and Atmospheric Circulation

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abrupt and large‐scale climate changes have occurred repeatedly and within decades during the last glaciation. These events, where dramatic warming occurs over decades, are well represented in both Greenland ice core mineral dust and temperature records, suggesting a causal link. However, the feedbacks between atmospheric dust and climate change during these Dansgaard–Oeschger events are poorly known and the processes driving changes in atmospheric dust emission and transport remain elusive. Constraining dust provenance is key to resolving these gaps. Here, we present a multi‐technique analysis of Greenland dust provenance using novel and established, source diagnostic isotopic tracers as well as results from a regional climate model including dust cycle simulations. We show that the existing dominant model for the provenance of Greenland dust as sourced from combined East Asian dust and Pacific volcanics is not supported. Rather, our clay mineralogical and Hf–Sr–Nd and D/H isotopic analyses from last glacial Greenland dust and an extensive range of Northern Hemisphere potential dust sources reveal three most likely scenarios (in order of probability): direct dust sourcing from the Taklimakan Desert in western China, direct sourcing from European glacial sources, or a mix of dust originating from Europe and North Africa. Furthermore, our regional climate modeling demonstrates the plausibility of European or mixed European/North African sources for the first time. We suggest that the origin of dust to Greenland is potentially more complex than previously recognized, demonstrating more uncertainty in our understanding dust climate feedbacks during abrupt events than previously understood.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 70%

Greenland Ice Core Record of Last Glacial Dust Sources and Atmospheric Circulation

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Enhanced northward ocean heat transport is the primary energy source sustaining the Northern Hemisphere warming of the Bølling-Allerød and the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean cooling of the ACR (Pedro et al, 2018). The northern warming is abrupt (decadal scale) because it is associated with breakdown of stratification, release of accumulated sub-surface heat and rapid sea ice retreat in the North Atlantic and Nordic seas (Dokken et al, 2016;Sadatzki et al, 2018, Capron et al, 2021. The large-scale atmospheric counterpart to these changes stems from the effective northward shift of the thermal equator, which sets the position of the Hadley circulation and ITCZ.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Northward shift of the southern westerlies during the Antarctic Cold Reversal

Fletcher

Pedro

Hall

et al. 2021

Quaternary Science Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…In Greenland, the RMAD value varies strongly across DO-events due to the much greater background variability during stadial periods as compared to interstadials (Table S2). This implies that the volcanic detection may be compromised for the time windows covering the fast transitions from stadials and interstadials (lasting on the order of decades to up to about 150 years, Capron et al (2021)) when the background variability changes in a short time. Thus, the volcano frequency found in these short intervals may be impacted, but the volcanic frequency outside of these short intervals is not affected.…”

Section: Background Signal Determination and Volcanic Peak Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnitude, frequency and climate forcing of global volcanism during the last glacial period as seen in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores (60–9 ka)

Lin

Svensson

Hvidberg

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Large volcanic eruptions occurring in the last glacial period can be detected in terms of their deposited sulfuric acid in continuous ice cores. Here we employ continuous sulfate and sulfur records from three Greenland and three Antarctic ice cores to estimate the emission strength, the frequency and the climatic forcing of large volcanic eruptions that occurred during the second half of the last glacial period and the early Holocene, 60–9 ka years before AD 2000 (b2k). The ice cores are synchronized over most of the investigated interval making it possible to distinguish large eruptions with a global sulfate distribution from eruptions detectable in one hemisphere only. Due to limited data resolution and to a large variability in the sulfate background signal, particularly in the Greenland glacial climate, we only detect Greenland sulfate depositions larger than 20 kg km−2 and Antarctic sulfate depositions larger than 10 kg km−2. With those restrictions, we identify 1113 volcanic eruptions in Greenland and 740 eruptions in Antarctica within the 51 ka period – where the sulfate deposition of 85 eruptions is defined at both poles (bipolar eruptions). Based on the relative Greenland and Antarctic sulfate deposition, we estimate the latitudinal band of the bipolar eruptions and assess their approximate climatic forcing based on established methods. The climate forcing of the five largest eruptions is estimated to be higher than −70 W m−2. Twenty-seven of the identified bipolar eruptions are larger than any volcanic eruption occurring in the last 2500 years and 69 eruptions are estimated to have larger sulfur emission strengths than the VEI-7 Tambora eruption that occurred in Indonesia in 1815 AD. The frequency of eruptions larger than the typical VEI-7 (VEI-8) eruption by the comparison of sulfur emission strength is found to be 5.3 (7) times higher than estimated from geological evidence. Throughout the investigated period, the frequency of volcanic eruptions is rather constant and comparable to that of recent times. During the deglacial period (16–9 ka b2k), however, there is a notable increase in the frequency of volcanic events recorded in Greenland and an obvious increase in the fraction of very large eruptions. For Antarctica, the deglacial period cannot be distinguished from other periods. These volcanoes documented in ice cores provide atmospheric sulfate burden and climate forcing for further research on climate impact and understanding the mechanism of the Earth system.

show abstract

The anatomy of past abrupt warmings recorded in Greenland ice

Cited by 39 publications

References 90 publications

Greenland Ice Core Record of Last Glacial Dust Sources and Atmospheric Circulation

Greenland Ice Core Record of Last Glacial Dust Sources and Atmospheric Circulation

Northward shift of the southern westerlies during the Antarctic Cold Reversal

Magnitude, frequency and climate forcing of global volcanism during the last glacial period as seen in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores (60–9 ka)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About