Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Timing is everything in a game of two hemispheres

Nature volume 394, pages 717–718 (1998)Cite this article

What causes ice ages, and other episodes of violent climate change? One clue comes from a new study of ice cores, which, unexpectedly, seems to show rapid warming events happening first in the Southern Hemisphere.

Leads and lags are at the heart of the palaeoclimate approach to understanding how the climate works. If event 1 leads event 2 in a palaeoclimatic record, for example, then event 1 could have caused event 2, but not vice versa. From this simple logic cause and effect is inferred, processes are proposed, models are tested, and our understanding of the climate system advances. But to establish leads and lags, dating of the records must be precise. For climate records extending back into glacial times, the state of the art has been to cross-date records to within about a thousand years. Yet many of the most dramatic climate-change events occur over much shorter timescales1.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: A comparison of the isotope records from the GRIP (Greenland) and Byrd (Antarctica) ice cores during the last ice age.

References

  1. Taylor, K. C.et al. Science 278, 825–827 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Blunier, T.et al. Nature 394, 739–743 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Blunier, T.et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 24, 2683–2686 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Broecker, W. S. & Denton, G. H. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 53, 2465–2501 (1989).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Imbrie, J.et al. Paleoceanography 8, 698–735 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Steig, E. J. et al. Ann. Glaciol. (in the press).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Campus Box 450, University of Colorado, Boulder, 80309, Colorado, USA

    James W. C. White & Eric J. Steig

Authors
  1. James W. C. White
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Eric J. Steig
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

White, J., Steig, E. Timing is everything in a game of two hemispheres. Nature 394, 717–718 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/29386

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/29386

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing