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.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Combined obliquity and precession pacing of late Pleistocene deglaciations

Nature volume 480, pages 229–232 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Milankovitch1 proposed that Earth resides in an interglacial state when its spin axis both tilts to a high obliquity and precesses to align the Northern Hemisphere summer with Earth’s nearest approach to the Sun. This general concept has been elaborated into hypotheses that precession2, obliquity3,4 or combinations of both5,6,7,8 could pace deglaciations during the late Pleistocene9,10. Earlier tests have shown that obliquity paces the late Pleistocene glacial cycles4,11 but have been inconclusive with regard to precession, whose shorter period of about 20,000 years makes phasing more sensitive to timing errors4,11,12. No quantitative test has provided firm evidence for a dual effect. Here I show that both obliquity and precession pace late Pleistocene glacial cycles. Deficiencies in time control that have long stymied efforts to establish orbital effects on deglaciation are overcome using a new statistical test that focuses on maxima in orbital forcing. The results are fully consistent with Milankovitch’s proposal but also admit the possibility that long Southern Hemisphere summers contribute to deglaciation.

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: Test of the Milankovitch hypothesis.
Figure 2: Sensitivity of the test to choice of orbital forcing.
Figure 3: Orbital forcing of glacial cycles.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Milankovitch, M. Kanon der Erdbestrahlung und seine Anwendung auf das Eiszeitenproblem 1–503 (Royal Serbian Academy, 1941)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Hays, J., Imbrie, J. & Shackleton, N. Variations in the Earth’s orbit: pacemaker of the ice ages. Science 194, 1121–1132 (1976)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Liu, H. Phase modulation effect of the Rubincam insolation variations. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 61, 217–229 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Huybers, P. & Wunsch, C. Obliquity pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial terminations. Nature 434, 491–494 (2005)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Imbrie, J. & Imbrie, J. Modeling the climatic response to orbital variations. Science 207, 943–953 (1980)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Paillard, D. The timing of Pleistocene glaciations from a simple multiple-state climate model. Nature 391, 378–381 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Berger, A., Li, X. & Loutre, M. Modelling northern hemisphere ice volume over the last 3Ma. Quat. Sci. Rev. 18, 1–11 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Tziperman, E., Raymo, M., Huybers, P. & Wunsch, C. Consequences of pacing the Pleistocene 100 kyr ice ages by nonlinear phase locking to Milankovitch forcing. Paleoceanography 21, PA4206 (2006)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Berger, A. Milankovitch theory and climate. Rev. Geophys. 26, 624–657 (1988)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Saltzman, B. Dynamical Paleoclimatology: Generalized Theory of Global Climate Change (Academic Press, 2002)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Huybers, P. Glacial variability over the last two million years: an extended depth-derived agemodel, continuous obliquity pacing, and the Pleistocene progression. Quat. Sci. Rev. 26, 37–55 (2007)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Kawamura, K. et al. Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years. Nature 448, 912–916 (2007)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Ghil, M. Cryothermodynamics: the chaotic dynamics of paleoclimate. Physica D 77, 130–159 (1994)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Wunsch, C. The spectral description of climate change including the 100ky energy. Clim. Dyn. 20, 353–363 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Herschel, J. On the astronomical causes which may influence geological phenomena. Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. 3, 293–300 (1832)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Huybers, P. Early Pleistocene glacial cycles and the integrated summer insolation forcing. Science 313, 508–511 (2006)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Raymo, M., Lisiecki, L. & Nisancioglu, K. Plio-Pleistocene ice volume, Antarctic climate, and the global δ18O record. Science 313, (2006)

  18. Min, K., Mundil, R., Renne, P. & Ludwig, K. A test for systematic errors in 40Ar/39Ar geochronology through comparison with U/Pb analysis of a 1.1-Ga rhyolite. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 64, 73–98 (2000)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Kuiper, K. et al. Synchronizing rock clocks of Earth history. Science 320, 500–504 (2008)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Broecker, W. In Milankovitch and Climate (eds Berger, A. et al.) Part 2, 687–698 (D. Riedel, 1984)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  21. Lisiecki, L. Links between eccentricity forcing and the 100,000-year glacial cycle. Nature Geosci. 3, 349–352 (2010)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Gibbons, J. Nonparametric Methods for Quantitative Analysis 1–487 (American Sciences Press, 1985)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  23. Imbrie, J. et al. On the structure and origin of major glaciation cycles. I: Linear responses to Milankovitch forcing. Paleoceanography 7, 701–738 (1992)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Siddall, M., Chappell, J. & Potter, E. In Developments in Quaternary Science Vol. 7, 75–92 (Elsevier, 2007)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Roe, G. & Allen, M. A comparison of competing explanations for the 100,000-yr ice age cycle. Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 2259–2262 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Broecker, W. & Henderson, G. The sequence of events surrounding Termination II and their implications for the cause of glacial-interglacial CO2 changes. Paleoceanography 13, 352–364 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Schulz, K. & Zeebe, R. Pleistocene glacial terminations triggered by synchronous changes in Southern and Northern Hemisphere insolation: the insolation canon hypothesis. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 249, 326–336 (2006)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Huybers, P. & Denton, G. Antarctic temperature at orbital time scales controlled by local summer duration. Nature Geosci. 1, 787–792 (2008)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Timmermann, A., Timm, O., Stott, L. & Menviel, L. The roles of CO2 and orbital forcing in driving Southern Hemispheric temperature variations during the last 21,000 years. J. Clim. 22, 1626–1640 (2009)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  30. Joussaume, S. & Braconnot, P. Sensitivity of paleoclimate simulation results to season definitions. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 1943–1956 (1997)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work benefited from comments by G. Gebbie, L. Lisiecki, A. Stine and C. Wunsch.

Author information

Author notes

  1. phuybers@fas.harvard.edu

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 20 Oxford Street, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Peter Huybers

Authors
  1. Peter Huybers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This zipped file contains the individual Matlab files that were used to generate the statistical and modeling results presented in the main paper. Also included is a supporting file (run_first.m) that contains the search path and three supporting directories that contain a total of 22 other files. Each m-file contains header information that explains its functionality in more detail. (ZIP 20125 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Huybers, P. Combined obliquity and precession pacing of late Pleistocene deglaciations. Nature 480, 229–232 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10626

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10626

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

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