Editor's Summary

10 November 2005

Follow the Sun

Dansgaard–Oeschger events are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred during and at the end of the last ice age with remarkable regularity: there were 23 such events between 110,000 and 23,000 years bp, with a periodicity of 1,470 years. Identify the source of this cycle, and it should be possible to say what triggered these events. The Sun had been excluded as a possible cause because of the lack of a 1,470-year spectral contribution in records of solar variability. Despite this, Braun et al. present a new hypothesis that convincingly explains the 1,470-year period as the net result of two well known solar cycles, the DeVries and Gleissberg cycles, with periods of 210 years and 87 years.

Letter: Possible solar origin of the 1,470-year glacial climate cycle demonstrated in a coupled model

Holger Braun, Marcus Christl, Stefan Rahmstorf, Andrey Ganopolski, Augusto Mangini, Claudia Kubatzki, Kurt Roth and Bernd Kromer

doi:10.1038/nature04121

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