1. College of Oceanic & Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA
2. Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

Correspondence to: Andreas Schmittner¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.S. (Email: aschmitt@coas.oregonstate.edu).

Earth's climate and the concentrations of the atmospheric greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) varied strongly on millennial timescales during past glacial periods. Large and rapid warming events in Greenland and the North Atlantic were followed by more gradual cooling, and are highly correlated with fluctuations of N₂O as recorded in ice cores. Antarctic temperature variations, on the other hand, were smaller and more gradual, showed warming during the Greenland cold phase and cooling while the North Atlantic was warm, and were highly correlated with fluctuations in CO₂. Abrupt changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) have often been invoked to explain the physical characteristics of these Dansgaard–Oeschger climate oscillations^{1, 2, 3}, but the mechanisms for the greenhouse-gas variations and their linkage to the AMOC have remained unclear^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8}. Here we present simulations with a coupled model of glacial climate and biogeochemical cycles, forced only with changes in the AMOC. The model simultaneously reproduces characteristic features of the Dansgaard–Oeschger temperature, as well as CO₂ and N₂O fluctuations. Despite significant changes in the land carbon inventory, CO₂ variations on millennial timescales are dominated by slow changes in the deep ocean inventory of biologically sequestered carbon and are correlated with Antarctic temperature and Southern Ocean stratification. In contrast, N₂O co-varies more rapidly with Greenland temperatures owing to fast adjustments of the thermocline oxygen budget. These results suggest that ocean circulation changes were the primary mechanism that drove glacial CO₂ and N₂O fluctuations on millennial timescales.

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