Research Briefing |
Featured
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Article |
Near-synchronous Northern Hemisphere and Patagonian Ice Sheet variation over the last glacial cycle
Patagonian ice sheet changes largely mirrored those of the Northern Hemisphere over the last glacial cycle owing to displacements of the southern westerly winds, according to beryllium isotope constraints.
- Adam D. Sproson
- , Yusuke Yokoyama
- & Siyao M. Yu
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Article
| Open Access
Rapid Laurentide Ice Sheet growth preceding the Last Glacial Maximum due to summer snowfall
The size and shape of the North American ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum was set by atmospheric moisture transport feedbacks during summer, not by the geometry of the earlier intermediate-sized ice sheet, according to a coupled climate–ice sheet model.
- Lu Niu
- , Gregor Knorr
- & Gerrit Lohmann
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Research Briefing |
Evolution of Earth’s oxygenation and temperature depends on surface carbonate accumulation
There are no good models for the chemical evolution of the Earth’s surface over the planet’s lifetime, because models typically overlook the progressive build-up of carbonate rocks in the crust. A new model that includes this accumulation enables the reconstruction of major oxygen and temperature trends throughout Earth’s history.
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Research Briefing |
Early Jurassic large igneous province carbon emissions are constrained by sedimentary mercury
The carbon emissions of large igneous province magmatism are commonly associated with severe environmental crises. We developed a technique that used sedimentary mercury records to estimate these carbon fluxes through time and found that they are smaller and/or slower than assumed, which suggests that the influence of carbon-cycle feedback processes is underestimated in current models.
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Article
| Open Access
Late Pleistocene emergence of an anthropogenic fire regime in Australia’s tropical savannahs
A shift towards more-frequent, less-intense fires in Australia began about 11,000 years ago due to management by Indigenous societies, according to charcoal and stable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon records extending back 150,000 years.
- Michael I. Bird
- , Michael Brand
- & Corey J. A. Bradshaw
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Article
| Open Access
Early Jurassic large igneous province carbon emissions constrained by sedimentary mercury
Sedimentary mercury measurements suggest carbon emissions from Early Jurassic large igneous province activity were lower than estimates from carbon-cycle models, implying feedbacks that are unaccounted for.
- Isabel M. Fendley
- , Joost Frieling
- & Hugh C. Jenkyns
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Editorial |
Melting ice core archives
Urgent efforts are needed to collect and preserve ice cores from mountain glaciers before these archives are lost.
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Article
| Open Access
Abrupt Holocene ice loss due to thinning and ungrounding in the Weddell Sea Embayment
The Ronne Ice Shelf of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated rapidly in the early Holocene due to ice sheet dynamic thinning and subsequent ungrounding, according to an ice core record from Skytrain Ice Rise.
- Mackenzie M. Grieman
- , Christoph Nehrbass-Ahles
- & Eric W. Wolff
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Article |
Proto-monsoon rainfall and greening in Central Asia due to extreme early Eocene warmth
Proto-monsoon expansion doubled rainfall in Central Asia during an early Eocene hyperthermal, leading to a rapid if transient expansion of forests replacing the steppe-desert.
- Niels Meijer
- , Alexis Licht
- & Guillaume Dupont-Nivet
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Article
| Open Access
Late Miocene onset of the modern Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Ocean sediment records suggest that the modern Antarctic Circumpolar Current did not exist before the late Miocene cooling, indicating its origin is linked to the expansion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
- Dimitris Evangelinos
- , Johan Etourneau
- & Carlota Escutia
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Perspective |
Geological evidence for multiple climate transitions on Early Mars
Early Mars did not experience a single wet-to-dry transition, but seven such shifts in its palaeoclimatic history, as argued based on the planet’s stratigraphy, mineralogy and geomorphology.
- Edwin S. Kite
- & Susan Conway
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Research Briefing |
Clay minerals store organic carbon and cool Earth’s climate over millions of years
An integrated model of mineral weathering and carbon cycling reveals the substantial influence that clay minerals originating from the weathering of magnesium-rich rocks have on Earth’s climate. This research indicates that this clay-forming process contributed to each Palaeozoic glaciation.
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Article |
Recent human-induced atmospheric drying across Europe unprecedented in the last 400 years
The atmosphere has dried across most regions of Europe in recent decades, a trend that can be attributed primarily to human impacts, according to tree ring records spanning 400 years and Earth system model simulations.
- Kerstin Treydte
- , Laibao Liu
- & Neil J. Loader
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Article
| Open Access
Antarctic Peninsula glaciation patterns set by landscape evolution and dynamic topography
Spatially distinct ice-sheet growth on the Antarctic Peninsula through the Pleistocene was the result of dynamic topography and pre-glacial landscape evolution, not climate, according to a palaeotopographic reconstruction and ice-sheet modelling.
- Matthew Fox
- , Anna Clinger
- & Frederic Herman
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Article |
Palaeozoic cooling modulated by ophiolite weathering through organic carbon preservation
Weathering of mafic and ultramafic lithologies in ophiolites can enhance the preservation of organic carbon through the formation of smectite clays and modulate Earth’s climate, according to a coupled mineral weathering and carbon box model.
- Joshua Murray
- & Oliver Jagoutz
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Perspective |
Collaboration between women helps close the gender gap in ice core science
Authorship statistics from ice core science suggest that collaboration between women is a key factor in closing gender gaps in scientific publishing.
- Bess G. Koffman
- , Matthew B. Osman
- & Sofia Guest
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Article |
Atmospheric methane variability through the Last Glacial Maximum and deglaciation mainly controlled by tropical sources
Abrupt changes in atmospheric methane through the last deglaciation were largely the result of tropical sources responding to shifting rainfall patterns, according to a comparison of precisely dated ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica.
- Ben Riddell-Young
- , Julia Rosen
- & Thomas Blunier
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Article |
Southeast Asian ecological dependency on Tibetan Plateau streamflow over the last millennium
Reconstructions of Tibetan Plateau streamflow over the last millennia reveal close associations with dry season vegetation and major population shifts in Southeast Asia.
- Feng Chen
- , Wenmin Man
- & Fahu Chen
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Article
| Open Access
Early Eocene low orography and high methane enhance Arctic warming via polar stratospheric clouds
Indirect forcing by low regional orography and high atmospheric methane levels contributed to the amplified Arctic temperatures in the early Eocene by enhancing polar stratospheric cloud formation, according to an atmospheric model with interactive chemistry.
- Deepashree Dutta
- , Martin Jucker
- & Jiang Zhu
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Perspective |
Regional but not global temperature variability underestimated by climate models at supradecadal timescales
Discrepancies between model simulations and proxy reconstructions of regional multidecadal to centennial climate variability are primarily due to climate model deficiencies, which might also impact future projections, according to a synthesis of recent work.
- T. Laepple
- , E. Ziegler
- & K. Rehfeld
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Article |
Globally coherent water cycle response to temperature change during the past two millennia
Global temperature fluctuations during the last 2,000 years caused consistent changes in ocean evaporation and atmospheric moisture condensation processes, reflected in coherent water isotope signals in a large compilation of proxy records.
- Bronwen L. Konecky
- , Nicholas P. McKay
- & Kei Yoshimura
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Article |
Chicxulub impact winter sustained by fine silicate dust
Fine silicate dust generated by the Chicxulub impact had a dominant role in the global cooling and disruption of photosynthesis that followed, according to palaeoclimate simulations constrained by grain-size analysis of Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary sediments.
- Cem Berk Senel
- , Pim Kaskes
- & Özgür Karatekin
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Article |
Emergence of the modern global monsoon from the Pangaea megamonsoon set by palaeogeography
Varying monsoon extent and intensity since the expansive megamonsoon on the Pangaea supercontinent was controlled by the position and fragmentation of continental land masses, according to climate simulations and atmospheric energetic analyses.
- Yongyun Hu
- , Xiang Li
- & Zhengtang Guo
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Article |
Oxygenated deep waters fed early Atlantic overturning circulation upon Antarctic glaciation
Deep-ocean oxygenation patterns consistent with an active Atlantic meridional overturning circulation emerged following the Eocene-Oligocene transition about 34 million years ago, according to biomarker records from the northwest North Atlantic.
- Huanye Wang
- , Weiguo Liu
- & Zhonghui Liu
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Research Briefing |
Subglacial landscape in the Antarctic interior consistent with past fast ice flow
Swath radar maps of the subglacial landscape reveal how Antarctica’s geologic history has influenced the evolution of the ice sheet. The findings indicate the role of past interior ice streams in shaping ice-sheet growth and flow from Hercules Dome.
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Article
| Open Access
Scars of tectonism promote ice-sheet nucleation from Hercules Dome into West Antarctica
Alpine valleys and lineated bedforms imaged with swath radar suggest that ice flowed quickly into a fault-bounded basin during the initial nucleation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet near Hercules Dome.
- Andrew O. Hoffman
- , Nicholas Holschuh
- & Knut Christianson
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Research Briefing |
A Grand Canyon palaeoclimate record shows a strengthened Early Holocene monsoon
From a stalagmite that grew 14,000–8,500 years ago, isotopic data provide a detailed history of groundwater infiltration associated with a strengthening North American monsoon, as the climate transitioned from a cool dry late-glacial period into a warmer and wetter Early Holocene.
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Article |
Elevated Grand Canyon groundwater recharge during the warm Early Holocene
Early Holocene groundwater recharge rates were higher than modern in the Grand Canyon region, probably due to an expanded North American Monsoon, according to a speleothem record and isotope-enabled palaeoclimate modelling.
- Matthew S. Lachniet
- , Xiaojing Du
- & Benjamin W. Tobin
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Sensitivity of Santorini eruption model predictions to input conditions
- A. Gudmundsson
- , M. Bazargan
- & C. Satow
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Article
| Open Access
Climate extremes likely to drive land mammal extinction during next supercontinent assembly
The Earth may become inhospitable to land mammals in about 250 Myr owing to climate warming and drying associated with the assembly of the next supercontinent, Pangaea-Ultima, according to combined tectonic, climate and mammal habitability modelling.
- Alexander Farnsworth
- , Y. T. Eunice Lo
- & Hannah R. Wakeford
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Article |
Benthic δ18O records Earth’s energy imbalance
While generally tracking Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, the Earth gained energy during cold millennial scale events throughout the past 150,000 years, according to an analysis of benthic oxygen isotopes.
- Sarah Shackleton
- , Alan Seltzer
- & Lorraine E. Lisiecki
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Article |
High-elevation Tibetan Plateau before India–Eurasia collision recorded by triple oxygen isotopes
The triple oxygen isotope composition of quartz veins indicates that the southern Tibetan Plateau was already around 3.5 km high by 60 million years ago, showing that substantial surface uplift started before collision of the Eurasian and Indian plates.
- Daniel E. Ibarra
- , Jingen Dai
- & Chengshan Wang
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Correspondence |
Melting glaciers threaten ice core science on the Tibetan Plateau
- Yulan Zhang
- & Shichang Kang
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Research Briefing |
Disappearance of Arctic sea ice during summers of the Last Interglacial
Analysis of the microfossil content of sediment cores from areas where thick Arctic sea ice persists today reveals that a subpolar species associated with Atlantic water expanded deep into the Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial. This finding implies that summers in the Arctic were likely sea-ice-free during this period.
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Article
| Open Access
A seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial
The warm Last Interglacial led to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean and a transformation to Atlantic conditions, according to planktic foraminifera records from central Arctic Ocean sediment cores.
- Flor Vermassen
- , Matt O’Regan
- & Helen K. Coxall
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Article
| Open Access
Shallow-water hydrothermal venting linked to the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum
Widespread shallow-water hydrothermal venting in the North Atlantic, probably a source of methane, coincided with the onset of the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, according to borehole proxy records and seismic imaging.
- Christian Berndt
- , Sverre Planke
- & Stacy L. Yager
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Article
| Open Access
Enhanced clay formation key in sustaining the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum
The long duration of the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum, compared with other transient Eocene warming events, can be explained by an increase in clays forming from the weathering of silicate minerals, according to lithium isotope records of marine carbonates.
- Alexander J. Krause
- , Appy Sluijs
- & Philip A. E. Pogge von Strandmann
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Article
| Open Access
Late Pleistocene 100-kyr glacial cycles paced by precession forcing of summer insolation
Orbital precession played a more important role than obliquity during Late Pleistocene swings in ice-sheet extent, according to an analysis of benthic oxygen isotope records with precise age constraints.
- Bethany Hobart
- , Lorraine E. Lisiecki
- & Charles E. Lawrence
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Brief Communication
| Open Access
Mid-Proterozoic day length stalled by tidal resonance
Analysis of changes in the Earth’s rotation in the Precambrian suggests that day length stabilized at 19 h for 1 billion years due to tidal resonance, which may have been linked to a relatively quiescent period of tectonic activity and biological evolution.
- Ross N. Mitchell
- & Uwe Kirscher
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Article |
Late Miocene onset of hyper-aridity in East Antarctica indicated by meteoric beryllium-10 in permafrost
The hyper-arid climate of modern East Antarctica only arose in the late Miocene, millions of years after the interval of rapid ice-sheet expansion, according to meteoric beryllium-10 concentrations within the permafrost.
- Marjolaine Verret
- , Cassandra Trinh-Le
- & Tim Naish
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Article |
Arctic mercury flux increased through the Last Glacial Termination with a warming climate
Mercury deposition onto the Greenland Ice Sheet increased from the Last Glacial Termination to early Holocene as the North Atlantic warmed and sea ice retreated, according to an ice-core mercury record and atmospheric chemistry modelling.
- Delia Segato
- , Alfonso Saiz-Lopez
- & Andrea Spolaor
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News & Views |
A current take on past overturning
Deep overturning circulation in the North Atlantic strongly influences the global climate system. Combined proxy record compilations and modelling refine our understanding of the behaviour of this circulation over the last 20,000 years.
- K. Halimeda Kilbourne
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Article
| Open Access
Multi-proxy constraints on Atlantic circulation dynamics since the last ice age
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was shallow and weak during the Last Glacial Maximum, and water masses took time to adjust to circulation shifts during the Last Deglaciation, according to a reassessment of proxy records and model simulations.
- Frerk Pöppelmeier
- , Aurich Jeltsch-Thömmes
- & Thomas F. Stocker
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Article |
Dampened predictable decadal North Atlantic climate fluctuations due to ice melting
Meltwater discharge to the mid-Holocene North Atlantic disrupted decadal climate variability, suggesting future melting on Greenland may hinder climate predictability in the region, according to an annually laminated lake-sediment record and transient model simulations.
- Celia Martin-Puertas
- , Armand Hernandez
- & Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Tovar
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Article |
Atmospheric and oceanic circulation altered by global mean sea-level rise
Climate model simulations suggest that atmospheric and oceanic circulation are modified by spatially uniform changes in global sea level.
- Zhongshi Zhang
- , Eystein Jansen
- & Zhengtang Guo
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Article |
Decadal warming events extended into central North America during the last glacial period
Rapid warmings of >10 °C occurred repeatedly during the last glacial period in central North America, probably coinciding with Dansgaard–Oeschger warming events, according to an annually resolved speleothem oxygen isotope record and palaeoclimate simulations.
- C. J. Batchelor
- , S. A. Marcott
- & R. L. Edwards
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Article |
Early Pleistocene East Antarctic temperature in phase with local insolation
East Antarctic surface temperature co-varied with local insolation in the Early Pleistocene, leading to the cancellation of global orbital ice sheet forcing from precession, according to temperature proxies and insolation-related gas ratios in ice cores.
- Yuzhen Yan
- , Andrei V. Kurbatov
- & John A. Higgins
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Article |
West Antarctic ice volume variability paced by obliquity until 400,000 years ago
The advance and retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were primarily paced by 41,000-year-long obliquity cycles, not longer eccentricity cycles, until 400,000 years ago, according to sedimentological and palaeomagnetic records from the Ross Embayment.
- Christian Ohneiser
- , Christina L. Hulbe
- & Rachel A. Worthington
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Article
| Open Access
Millennial-scale climate variability over land overprinted by ocean temperature fluctuations
Temperature variability over land is enhanced by ocean temperature fluctuations on millennial timescales, with implications for regional-scale climate change, according to an analysis of Northern Hemisphere proxy records and observations.
- R. Hébert
- , U. Herzschuh
- & T. Laepple
Reconstruction of Patagonia’s glacial history informs key global climate drivers