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Links between ocean temperature and iceberg discharge during Heinrich events

Abstract

Palaeoclimate records have revealed the presence of millennial-scale climate oscillations throughout the last glacial period1. Six periods of extreme cooling in the Northern Hemisphere—known as Heinrich events—were marked by an enhanced discharge of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean2,3, increasing the deposition of ice-rafted debris2. Increased sliding at the base of ice sheets as a result of basal warming has been proposed to explain the iceberg pulses4,5,6, but recent observations7,8 suggest that iceberg discharge is related to a strong coupling between ice sheets, ice shelves and ocean conditions. Here we use a conceptual numerical model to simulate the effect of ocean temperature on ice-shelf width, as well as the impact of the resultant changes in ice-shelf geometry on ice-stream velocities. Our results demonstrate that ocean temperature oscillations affect the basal melting of the ice shelf and will generate periodic pulses of iceberg discharge in an ice sheet with a fringing shelf. We also find that the irregular occurrence of Heinrich events seen in the palaeoclimate records can be simulated by periodic ocean forcing combined with varying accumulation rates of the ice sheet. Our model simulations support a link between millennial-scale ocean temperature variability and Heinrich events during the last glacial period.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the conceptual model.
Figure 2: Standard simulation.
Figure 3: Spectral analysis of the time-dependent grounded ice thickness.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Kageyama, D. Roche, K. Nisancioglu, T. Dokken, M. Montoya, F. Pattyn and B. Otto-Bliesner for helpful discussions. We are also very grateful to L. Tarasov for constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript. This work was supported by the European programme NICE (Network for Ice sheet and Climate Evolution) and by the French National ANR project IDEGLACE.

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All authors contributed to the analysis of model results and commented on the manuscript. J.A.-S. and C.R. developed the box model and defined the design of the experiments. J.A-S., S.C. and C.R. participated in the writing of the manuscript. C.D. provided technical support and implemented analytical tools.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jorge Alvarez-Solas.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Alvarez-Solas, J., Charbit, S., Ritz, C. et al. Links between ocean temperature and iceberg discharge during Heinrich events. Nature Geosci 3, 122–126 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo752

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