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Links between tropical rainfall and North Atlantic climate during the last glacial period

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 213–217 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

During the last glacial period, the North Atlantic regionexperienced pronounced, millennial-scale alternations between cold, stadial conditions and milder interstadial conditions—commonly referred to as Dansgaard–Oeschger oscillations—as well as periods of massive iceberg discharge known as Heinrich events1. Changes in Northern Hemisphere temperature, as recorded in Greenland2,3,4, are thought to have affected the location of the Atlantic intertropical convergence zone5,6 and the strength of the Indian summer monsoon7,8. Here we use high-resolution records of sediment colour—a measure of terrigenous versus biogenic content—from the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela and the Arabian Sea to assess teleconnections with the North Atlantic climate system during the last glacial period. The Cariaco record indicates that the intertropical convergence zone migrated seasonally over the site during mild stadial conditions, but was permanently displaced south of the basin during peak stadials and Heinrich events. In the Arabian Sea, we find evidence of a weak Indian summer monsoon during the stadial events. The tropical records show a more variable response to North Atlantic cooling than the Greenland temperature records. We therefore suggest that Greenland climate is especially sensitive to variations in the North Atlantic system—in particular sea-ice extent—whereas the intertropical convergence zone and Indian monsoon system respond primarily to variations in mean Northern Hemisphere temperature.

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Figure 1: Comparison of Cariaco Basin and Arabian Sea sediment total reflectance (L*) with δ18O from NGRIP ice core.
Figure 2: Comparison of tropical and Greenland palaeoclimate variability.
Figure 3: Result of water-hosing simulation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the RV Marion Dufresne team, IPEV and the IMAGES programme for retrieving the Cariaco Basin cores during the PICASSO cruise. We are grateful to I. Hajdas and P. M. Grootes for performing the AMS 14C measurements. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Geological Institute, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland

    Gaudenz Deplazes, Yvonne Hamann & Gerald H. Haug

  2. Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, 30655 Hannover, Germany

    Andreas Lückge

  3. Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, Florida 33149, USA

    Larry C. Peterson

  4. IPRC, SOEST, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA

    Axel Timmermann

  5. Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA

    Konrad A. Hughen

  6. MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany

    Ursula Röhl

  7. Laboratoire de Sciences du Climat et de l’Environment/IPSL, CEA/CNRS/UVSQ, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

    Carlo Laj

  8. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA

    Mark A. Cane

  9. Department of Geosciences, Guyot Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

    Daniel M. Sigman

  10. DFG Leibnitz Center for Earth Surface Process and Climate Studies, Institute for Geosciences, Potsdam University, Potsdam D-14476, Germany

    Gerald H. Haug

Authors
  1. Gaudenz Deplazes
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Contributions

G.D. performed the reflectance analyses, interpreted the data and wrote the first version of the manuscript. A.L., L.C.P., C.L. and G.H.H. designed the study and helped organize the coring campaigns. Y.H. and U.R. supervised taking the pictures at the ETH Zürich and the MARUM, University of Bremen. A.T. analysed the water-hosing simulation. D.M.S and M.A.C. contributed to the interpretation of the data. All the authors discussed the results and provided significant input to the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Gaudenz Deplazes or Gerald H. Haug.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Deplazes, G., Lückge, A., Peterson, L. et al. Links between tropical rainfall and North Atlantic climate during the last glacial period. Nature Geosci 6, 213–217 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1712

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