Frédéric Parrenin

Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core

The Antarctic Vostok ice core provided compelling evidence of the nature of climate, and of climate feedbacks, over the past 420,000 years. Marine records suggest that the amplitude of climate variability was smaller before that time, but such records are often poorly resolved. Moreover, it is not possible to infer the abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from marine records. Here we report the recovery of a deep ice core from Dome C, Antarctica, that provides a climate record for the past 740,000 years. For the four most recent glacial cycles, the data agree well with the record from Vostok. The earlier period, between 740,000 and 430,000 years ago, was characterized by less pronounced warmth in interglacial periods in Antarctica, but a higher proportion of each cycle was spent in the warm mode. The transition from glacial to interglacial conditions about 430,000 years ago (Termination V) resembles the transition into the present interglacial period in terms of the magnitude of change in temperatures and greenhouse gases, but there are significant differences in the patterns of change. The interglacial stage following Termination V was exceptionally long—28,000 years compared to, for example, the 12,000 years recorded so far in the present interglacial period. Given the similarities between this earlier warm period and today, our results may imply that without human intervention, a climate similar to the present one would extend well into the future.The Antarctic Vostok ice core provided compelling evidence of the nature of climate, and of climate feedbacks, over the past 420,000 years. Marine records suggest that the amplitude of climate variability was smaller before that time, but such records are often poorly resolved. Moreover, it is not possible to infer the abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from marine records. Here we report the recovery of a deep ice core from Dome C, Antarctica, that provides a climate record for the past 740,000 years. For the four most recent glacial cycles, the data agree well with the record from Vostok. The earlier period, between 740,000 and 430,000 years ago, was characterized by less pronounced warmth in interglacial periods in Antarctica, but a higher proportion of each cycle was spent in the warm mode. The transition from glacial to interglacial conditions about 430,000 years ago (Termination V) resembles the transition into the present interglacial period in terms of the magnitude of change in temperatures and greenhouse gases, but there are significant differences in the patterns of change. The interglacial stage following Termination V was exceptionally long—28,000 years compared to, for example, the 12,000 years recorded so far in the present interglacial period. Given the similarities between this earlier warm period and today, our results may imply that without human intervention, a climate similar to the present one would extend well into the future.

One-to-one coupling of glacial climate variability in Greenland and Antarctica.

Precise knowledge of the phase relationship between climate changes in the two hemispheres is a key for understanding the Earth’s climate dynamics. For the last glacial period, ice core studies have revealed strong coupling of the largest millennial-scale warm events in Antarctica with the longest Dansgaard–Oeschger events in Greenland through the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. It has been unclear, however, whether the shorter Dansgaard–Oeschger events have counterparts in the shorter and less prominent Antarctic temperature variations, and whether these events are linked by the same mechanism. Here we present a glacial climate record derived from an ice core from Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, which represents South Atlantic climate at a resolution comparable with the Greenland ice core records. After methane synchronization with an ice core from North Greenland, the oxygen isotope record from the Dronning Maud Land ice core shows a one-to-one coupling between all Antarctic warm events and Greenland Dansgaard–Oeschger events by the bipolar seesaw6. The amplitude of the Antarctic warm events is found to be linearly dependent on the duration of the concurrent stadial in the North, suggesting that they all result from a similar reduction in the meridional overturning circulation.

Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years.

The Milankovitch theory of climate change proposes that glacial–interglacial cycles are driven by changes in summer insolation at high northern latitudes. The timing of climate change in the Southern Hemisphere at glacial–interglacial transitions (which are known as terminations) relative to variations in summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere is an important test of this hypothesis. So far, it has only been possible to apply this test to the most recent termination, because the dating uncertainty associated with older terminations is too large to allow phase relationships to be determined. Here we present a new chronology of Antarctic climate change over the past 360,000 years that is based on the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen molecules in air trapped in the Dome Fuji and Vostok ice cores. This ratio is a proxy for local summer insolation, and thus allows the chronology to be constructed by orbital tuning without the need to assume a lag between a climate record and an orbital parameter. The accuracy of the chronology allows us to examine the phase relationships between climate records from the ice cores and changes in insolation. Our results indicate that orbital-scale Antarctic climate change lags Northern Hemisphere insolation by a few millennia, and that the increases in Antarctic temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration during the last four terminations occurred within the rising phase of Northern Hemisphere summer insolation. These results support the Milankovitch theory that Northern Hemisphere summer insolation triggered the last four deglaciations.

Magnitude of isotope/temperature scaling for interpretation of central Antarctic ice cores

[1] The conventional interpretation of ice core deuterium and oxygen 18 isotope profiles based on the use of present-day observations (spatial slope) underestimates glacialinterglacial surface temperature changes in Central Greenland by up to a factor of two. This likely results from changes in the seasonality of the precipitation due to the particular location of the Greenland ice sheet next to the highly variable northern polar front. In this regard the situation is much simpler for central Antarctica and this should be reflected in the temperature interpretation of ice core isotopic records. With this in mind, we closely examine all relevant information, focusing on the East Antarctic Plateau where both model and empirical isotope-temperature estimates are available. We point to the fact that correctly accounting for the influence of ocean isotopic change is important when interpreting deuterium profiles from ice cores in this region. The evidence presently available indicates that, unlike for Greenland, the present-day spatial-slope can probably be taken as a surrogate of the temporal slope to interpret glacial-interglacial isotopic changes at sites such as Vostok and EPICA Dome C. Corresponding temperature changes are within � 10% to +30% of those obtained from the conventional interpretation based on the use of the spatial slope. INDEX TERMS: 1040 Geochemistry: Isotopic composition/ chemistry; 1827 Hydrology: Glaciology (1863); 3344 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Paleoclimatology; 9310 Information Related to Geographic Region: Antarctica; KEYWORDS: water isotopes, temperature estimate, Antarctica, deuterium, oxygen 18

800,000 Years of Abrupt Climate Variability

Greenland climate variability for the past 800,000 years was inferred from the Antarctic ice-core temperature record. 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.

Synchronous Change of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature During the Last Deglacial Warming

No Leader to Follow Changes in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and surface air temperature are closely related. However, temperature can influence atmospheric CO2 as well as be influenced by it. Studies of polar ice cores have concluded that temperature increases during periods of rapid warming have preceded increases in CO2 by hundreds of years. Parrenin et al. (p. 1060; see the Perspective by Brook) present a revised age scale for the atmospheric component of Antarctic ice cores, based on the isotopic composition of the N2 that they contain, and suggest that temperature and CO2 changed synchronously over four intervals of rapid warming during the last deglaciation. Rising air temperature did not lead the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration during the last deglaciation. [Also see Perspective by Brook] Understanding the role of atmospheric CO2 during past climate changes requires clear knowledge of how it varies in time relative to temperature. Antarctic ice cores preserve highly resolved records of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the past 800,000 years. Here we propose a revised relative age scale for the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the last deglacial warming, using data from five Antarctic ice cores. We infer the phasing between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature at four times when their trends change abruptly. We find no significant asynchrony between them, indicating that Antarctic temperature did not begin to rise hundreds of years before the concentration of atmospheric CO2, as has been suggested by earlier studies.

Dating the Vostok ice core by an inverse method

Using the chronological information available in the Vostok records, we apply an inverse method to assess the quality of the Vostok glaciological timescale. The inversion procedure provides not only an optimized glaciological timescale and its confidence interval but also a reliable estimate of the duration of successive events. Our results highlight a disagreement between orbitally tuned and glaciological timescales below ∼2700 m (i.e., ∼250 kyr B.P., thousands of years before present). This disagreement could be caused by some discontinuity in the spatial variation of accumulation upstream of Vostok. Moreover, the stratigraphic datings of central Greenland ice cores (GRIP and GISP2) appear older than our optimized timescale for the late glacial. This underlines an unconsistency between the physical assumptions used to construct the Vostok glaciological timescale and the stratigraphic datings. The inverse method allows the first assessment of the evolution of the phase between Vostok climatic records and insolation. This phase significantly varies with time which gives a measure of the nonlinear character of the climatic system and suggests that the climatic response to orbital forcing is of different nature for glacial and interglacial periods. We confirm that the last interglacial, as recorded in the Vostok deuterium record, was long (16.2±2 kyr, thousands of years). However, midtransition of termination II occurred at 133.4±2.5 kyr BP, which does not support the recent claim for an earlier deglaciation. Finally, our study suggests that temperature changes are correctly estimated when using the spatial present-day deuterium-temperature relationship to interpret the Vostok deuterium record.

Interglacials of the last 800,000 years

Interglacials, including the present (Holocene) period, are warm, low land ice extent (high sea level), end-members of glacial cycles. Based on a sea level definition, we identify eleven interglacials in the last 800,000 years, a result that is robust to alternative definitions. Data compilations suggest that despite spatial heterogeneity, Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 5e (last interglacial) and 11c (~400 ka ago) were globally strong (warm), while MIS 13a (~500 ka ago) was cool at many locations. A step change in strength of interglacials at 450 ka is apparent only in atmospheric CO2 and in Antarctic and deep ocean temperature. The onset of an interglacial (glacial termination) seems to require a reducing precession parameter (increasing Northern Hemisphere summer insolation), but this condition alone is insufficient. Terminations involve rapid, nonlinear, reactions of ice volume, CO2, and temperature to external astronomical forcing. The precise timing of events may be modulated by millennial-scale climate change that can lead to a contrasting timing of maximum interglacial intensity in each hemisphere. A variety of temporal trends is observed, such that maxima in the main records are observed either early or late in different interglacials. The end of an interglacial (glacial inception) is a slower process involving a global sequence of changes. Interglacials have been typically 10–30 ka long. The combination of minimal reduction in northern summer insolation over the next few orbital cycles, owing to low eccentricity, and high atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations implies that the next glacial inception is many tens of millennia in the future.

Atmospheric oxygen 18 and sea-level changes

Past isotopic composition of atmospheric oxygen (δ18Oatm) can be inferred from the analysis of air bubbles trapped in ice caps. The longest record covers the last 420 ka (thousand of years) at the Vostok site in East Antarctica. It shows a strong modulation by the precession and striking similarities, but also noticeable differences, with the deep-sea core oxygen 18 record from which changes in the oxygen content of sea-water (δ18Osw) and in sea-level can be derived. Indeed, δ18Oatm is driven by complex fractionation processes occuring during respiration and photosynthesis. Both δ18Oatm and its difference with respect to δ18Osw (the Dole effect) are influenced by factors such as the ratio of oceanic and terrestrial productivities which may have significantly changed between different climates. Also, the response time of δ18Oatm to oceanic changes should be taken in consideration but this parameter itself depends on biospheric activity. We review the various aspects of the link between the δ18Oatm and the δ18Osw signals. We also examine the approach followed by Shackleton (Science (2000)) for deriving sea-level change from the δ18Oatm Vostok record, assuming that the phase between this record and insolation changes is constant and that the Dole effect is a fraction of the precessional component of the δ18Oatm signal. Glaciological constraints on the Vostok chronology and the complexity of the Dole effect show that those two assumptions are quite probably too simplistic.

Estimation of temperature change and of gas age‐ice age difference, 108 kyr B.P., at Vostok, Antarctica

Air trapped in ice core bubbles provides our primary source of information about past atmospheres. Air isotopic composition (15N/14N and 40Ar/36Ar) permits an estimate of the temperature shifts associated with abrupt climate changes because of isotope fractionation occurring in response to temperature gradients in the snow layer on top of polar ice sheets. A rapid surface temperature change modifies temporarily the firn temperature gradient, which causes a detectable anomaly in the isotopic composition of nitrogen and argon. The location of this anomaly in depth characterizes the gas age-ice age difference (Δage) during an abrupt event by correlation with the δD (or δ18O) anomaly in the ice. We focus this study on the marine isotope stage 5d/5c transition (108 kyr B.P.), a climate warming which was one of the most abrupt events in the Vostok (Antarctica) ice isotopic record [Petit et al., 1999]. A steplike decrease in δ15N and δ40Ar/4 from 0.49 to 0.47‰ (possibly a gravitational signal due to a change in firn thickness) is preceded by a small but detectable δ15N peak (possibly a thermal diffusion signal). We obtain an estimate of 5350±300 yr for Δage, close to the model estimate of 5000 years obtained using the Vostok glaciological timescale. Our results also suggest that the use of the present-day spatial isotope-temperature relationship slightly underestimates (but by no more than 20±15%) the Vostok temperature change from present day at that time, which is in contrast to the temperature estimate based on borehole temperature measurements in Vostok which suggests that Antarctic temperature changes are underestimated by up to 50% [Salamatin et al, 1998].