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Independent variations of CH4 emissions and isotopic composition over the past 160,000 years

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Abstract

During the last glacial cycle, greenhouse gas concentrations fluctuated on decadal and longer timescales. Concentrations of methane, as measured in polar ice cores, show a close connection with Northern Hemisphere temperature variability, but the contribution of the various methane sources and sinks to changes in concentration is still a matter of debate. Here we assess changes in methane cycling over the past 160,000 years by measurements of the carbon isotopic composition δ13C of methane in Antarctic ice cores from Dronning Maud Land and Vostok. We find that variations in the δ13C of methane are not generally correlated with changes in atmospheric methane concentration, but instead more closely correlated to atmospheric CO2 concentrations. We interpret this to reflect a climatic and CO2-related control on the isotopic signature of methane source material, such as ecosystem shifts in the seasonally inundated tropical wetlands that produce methane. In contrast, relatively stable δ13C values occurred during intervals of large changes in the atmospheric loading of methane. We suggest that most methane sources—most notably tropical wetlands—must have responded simultaneously to climate changes across these periods.

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Figure 1: Methane carbon isotope and other climate records.
Figure 2: Climate conditions during the ultimate and penultimate glacial terminations.
Figure 3: Zoom into MIS 3 and the MIS 5–4 boundary.

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  • 03 September 2013

    In the version of this Article originally published online, there was an text error in the section 'Climate and CO2-induced changes in wetland ecosystems'. This has been corrected.

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Acknowledgements

This work is a contribution to the EPICA; a joint ESF/EC scientific programme, financially supported by the EC and by national contributions from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. This is EPICA publication no. 293. Financial support for this work has been provided in part by the European Research Council Advanced Grant MATRICs, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and is also a contribution to the European Union’s Seventh Framework programme (FP7/2007-2013, grant no. 243908), ‘Past4Future. Climate Change: Learning from the past climate’. This is Past4Future contribution no. 55. Financial support for T.S. was derived from NSF grants 09-44584 and 09-68391.

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L.M., T.S., M. Bock and M. Behrens carried out the measurements. R.S. modelled the diffusion fractionation in the firn column. L.M. and H.F. wrote the manuscript. All authors worked on the scientific interpretation, contributed to the discussion with ideas and comments or helped to review the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hubertus Fischer.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Möller, L., Sowers, T., Bock, M. et al. Independent variations of CH4 emissions and isotopic composition over the past 160,000 years. Nature Geosci 6, 885–890 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1922

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