Sune Olander Rasmussen

High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period

Two deep ice cores from central Greenland, drilled in the 1990s, have played a key role in climate reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere, but the oldest sections of the cores were disturbed in chronology owing to ice folding near the bedrock. Here we present an undisturbed climate record from a North Greenland ice core, which extends back to 123,000 years before the present, within the last interglacial period. The oxygen isotopes in the ice imply that climate was stable during the last interglacial period, with temperatures 5 °C warmer than today. We find unexpectedly large temperature differences between our new record from northern Greenland and the undisturbed sections of the cores from central Greenland, suggesting that the extent of ice in the Northern Hemisphere modulated the latitudinal temperature gradients in Greenland. This record shows a slow decline in temperatures that marked the initiation of the last glacial period. Our record reveals a hitherto unrecognized warm period initiated by an abrupt climate warming about 115,000 years ago, before glacial conditions were fully developed. This event does not appear to have an immediate Antarctic counterpart, suggesting that the climate see-saw between the hemispheres (which dominated the last glacial period) was not operating at this time.Two deep ice cores from central Greenland, drilled in the 1990s, have played a key role in climate reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere, but the oldest sections of the cores were disturbed in chronology owing to ice folding near the bedrock. Here we present an undisturbed climate record from a North Greenland ice core, which extends back to 123,000 years before the present, within the last interglacial period. The oxygen isotopes in the ice imply that climate was stable during the last interglacial period, with temperatures 5 °C warmer than today. We find unexpectedly large temperature differences between our new record from northern Greenland and the undisturbed sections of the cores from central Greenland, suggesting that the extent of ice in the Northern Hemisphere modulated the latitudinal temperature gradients in Greenland. This record shows a slow decline in temperatures that marked the initiation of the last glacial period. Our record reveals a hitherto unrecognized warm period initiated by an abrupt climate warming about 115,000 years ago, before glacial conditions were fully developed. This event does not appear to have an immediate Antarctic counterpart, suggesting that the climate see-saw between the hemispheres (which dominated the last glacial period) was not operating at this time.

High-Resolution Greenland Ice Core Data Show Abrupt Climate Change Happens in Few Years

The last two abrupt warmings at the onset of our present warm interglacial period, interrupted by the Younger Dryas cooling event, were investigated at high temporal resolution from the North Greenland Ice Core Project ice core. The deuterium excess, a proxy of Greenland precipitation moisture source, switched mode within 1 to 3 years over these transitions and initiated a more gradual change (over 50 years) of the Greenland air temperature, as recorded by stable water isotopes. The onsets of both abrupt Greenland warmings were slightly preceded by decreasing Greenland dust deposition, reflecting the wetting of Asian deserts. A northern shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone could be the trigger of these abrupt shifts of Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation, resulting in changes of 2 to 4 kelvin in Greenland moisture source temperature from one year to the next.

A synchronized dating of three Greenland ice cores throughout the Holocene

As part of the effort to create the new Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) a synchronized stratigraphical timescale for the Holocene parts of the DYE- 3, GRIP and NGRIP ice cores is made by using volcanic reference horizons in electri- cal conductivity measurements to match the cores. The main annual layer counting is carried out on the most suited records only, exploit- ing that the three ice cores have been drilled at locations with different climatic con- ditions and differences in ice flow. However, supplemental counting on data from all cores has been performed between each set of reference horizons in order to verify the valid- ity of the match. After the verification, the main dating is transferred to all records us- ing the volcanic reference horizons as tie points. An assessment of the mean annual layer thickness in each core section confirms that the new synchronized dating is consistent for all three cores. The data used for the main annual layer counting of the past 7900 years are the DYE- 3, GRIP and NGRIP stable isotope records. As the high accumulation rate at the DYE- 3 drill site makes the seasonal cycle in the DYE-3 stable isotopes very resistant to firn diffusion, an effort has been made to extend the DYE-3 Holocene record. The new syn- chronized dating relies heavily on this record of �75,000 stable isotope samples. The dat- ing of the early Holocene consists of an already established part of GICC05 for GRIP and NGRIP which has now been transferred to the DYE-3 core. GICC05 dates the Younger Dryas termination, as defined from deuterium excess, to 11,703 b2k; 130 years earlier than the previous GRIP dating.

Holocene thinning of the Greenland ice sheet

On entering an era of global warming, the stability of the Greenland ice sheet (GIS) is an important concern, especially in the light of new evidence of rapidly changing flow and melt conditions at the GIS margins. Studying the response of the GIS to past climatic change may help to advance our understanding of GIS dynamics. The previous interpretation of evidence from stable isotopes (δ18O) in water from GIS ice cores was that Holocene climate variability on the GIS differed spatially and that a consistent Holocene climate optimum—the unusually warm period from about 9,000 to 6,000 years ago found in many northern-latitude palaeoclimate records—did not exist. Here we extract both the Greenland Holocene temperature history and the evolution of GIS surface elevation at four GIS locations. We achieve this by comparing δ18O from GIS ice cores with δ18O from ice cores from small marginal icecaps. Contrary to the earlier interpretation of δ18O evidence from ice cores, our new temperature history reveals a pronounced Holocene climatic optimum in Greenland coinciding with maximum thinning near the GIS margins. Our δ18O-based results are corroborated by the air content of ice cores, a proxy for surface elevation. State-of-the-art ice sheet models are generally found to be underestimating the extent and changes in GIS elevation and area; our findings may help to improve the ability of models to reproduce the GIS response to Holocene climate.

Timing of meltwater pulse 1a and climate responses to meltwater injections

The temporal relationship between meltwater pulse 1a (mwp-1a) and the climate history of the last deglaciation remains a subject of debate. By combining the Greenland Ice Core Project d18O ice core record on the new Greenland ice core chronology 2005 timescale with the U/Th-dated Barbados coral record, we conclusively derive that mwp-1a did not coincide with the sharp Bolling warming but instead with the abrupt cooling of the Older Dryas. To evaluate whether there is a relationship between meltwater injections, North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation, and climate change, we present a high-resolution record of NADW flow intensity from Eirik Drift through the last deglaciation. It indicates only a relatively minor 200-year weakening of NADW flow, coincident with mwp-1a. Our compilation of records also indicates that during Heinrich event 1 and the Younger Dryas there were no discernible sea level rises, and yet these periods were characterized by intense NADW slowdowns/shutdowns. Clearly, deepwater formation and climate are not simply controlled by the magnitude or rate of meltwater addition. Instead, our results emphasize that the location of meltwater pulses may be more important, with NADW formation being particularly sensitive to surface freshening in the Arctic/Nordic Seas.

Southern Ocean deep convection as a driver of Antarctic warming events

Simulations with a free-running coupled climate model show that heat release associated with Southern Ocean deep convection variability can drive centennial-scale Antarctic temperature variations of up to 2.0 °C. The mechanism involves three steps: Preconditioning: heat accumulates at depth in the Southern Ocean; Convection onset: wind and/or sea-ice changes tip the buoyantly unstable system into the convective state; Antarctic warming: fast sea-ice–albedo feedbacks (on annual–decadal timescales) and slow Southern Ocean frontal and sea-surface temperature adjustments to convective heat release (on multidecadal–century timescales) drive an increase in atmospheric heat and moisture transport toward Antarctica. We discuss the potential of this mechanism to help drive and amplify climate variability as observed in Antarctic ice-core records.

Direct chemical analysis of frozen ice cores by UV-laser ablation ICPMS

Cryo-cellUV-LA-ICPMS is a new technique for direct chemical analysis of frozen ice cores at high spatial resolution (<300 μm). It was tested in a pilot study on NGRIP ice and reveals sea ice/dust records and annual layer signatures at unprecedented spatial/time resolution. Uniquely, the location of cation impurities relative to grain boundaries in recrystallized ice can be assessed.

Deconvolution-based resolution enhancement of chemical ice core records obtained by continuous flow analysis

Continuous flow analysis (CFA) has become a popular measuring technique for obtaining high-resolution chemical ice core records due to an attractive combination of measuring speed and resolution. However, when analyzing the deeper sections of ice cores or cores from low-accumulation areas, there is still need for further improvement of the resolution. Here a method for resolution enhancement of CFA data is presented. It is demonstrated that it is possible to improve the resolution of CFA data by restoring some of the detail that was lost in the measuring process, thus improving the usefulness of the data for high-resolution studies such as annual layer counting. The presented method uses deconvolution techniques and is robust to the presence of noise in the measurements. If integrated into the data processing, it requires no additional data collection. The method is applied to selected ice core data sequences from Greenland and Antarctica, and the results demonstrate that the data quality can be significantly improved.

Extracting the annual signal from Greenland ice-core chemistry and isotopic records

Abstract Stratigraphic dating of ice cores by identification and counting of annual cycles in, for example, chemical measurements requires skill and experience. the work presented here investigates a method of data enhancement which is a first step towards an automated and more objective method of annual-layer counting. the method of dynamical decorrelation is briefly introduced and is applied to data from Site D and NorthGRIP in central Greenland. With this method the measured data series are decomposed into a number of independent source series, one of which exhibits a more pronounced annual variation than the input data themselves. the annual variation is more regular in that (1) some double and triple peaks in the measured series are replaced by single peaks in the extracted signal, and (2) the resulting annual peaks have a much more uniform height. A simple method of determining the number of annual peaks in a series is set up. Using this method, it is shown that it is easier to determine the number of annual peaks in the series produced by dynamical decorrelation than in the original data series. Dynamical decorrelation may thus be used to improve data series prior to dating.

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

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.A challenge for testing mechanisms of past climate change is the precise correlation of palaeoclimate records. Here, through climate modelling and the alignment of terrestrial, ice and marine 14C and 10Be records, the authors show that Southern Ocean freshwater hosing can trigger global change.