Palaeoclimate articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Article |

    The western Pacific warm pool and the Indonesian throughflow affect tropical climate and atmospheric convection. Marine sediment records reveal uniformly elevated temperatures from 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, despite the initiation of modern Indonesian throughflow circulation about 9,500 years ago.

    • Braddock K. Linsley
    • , Yair Rosenthal
    •  & Delia W. Oppo

  • Article |

    Ice ages during the Palaeozoic era are marked by glacial–interglacial cycles thought to be driven by variations in the Earth’s orbit. Numerical simulations suggest that the response of vegetation to the varying insolation may be an important factor in the associated climate response.

    • Daniel E. Horton
    • , Christopher J. Poulsen
    •  & David Pollard

  • News & Views |

    The Triassic/Jurassic boundary was marked by widespread environmental changes, including greenhouse warming. Palaeoecological reconstructions from East Greenland reveal a dramatic rise in fire activity, driven by vegetation shifts and climate change.

    • Bas van de Schootbrugge

  • Backstory |

    In their pursuit of palaeoclimatic reconstruction, Andrew Cohen and colleagues experienced the 'Eureka!' highs and dangerous lows of sediment coring in Lake Tanganyika, East Africa.

  • Letter |

    The 100,000-year glacial cycles are generally thought to be driven by the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit. Statistical analyses of climate variability and orbital forcing over the past five million years indicate that the glacial cycles are the result of an internal climate oscillation phase locked to the 100,000-year eccentricity cycle.

    • Lorraine E. Lisiecki

  • Letter |

    Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in sea water are driving a progressive acidification of the ocean, with as yet unclear impacts on marine calcifying organisms. Simulations with an Earth system model suggest that future changes in the marine environment could be more severe than those experienced during the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum, both in the deep ocean and near the surface.

    • Andy Ridgwell
    •  & Daniela N. Schmidt

  • Article |

    The southwest corner of Western Australia has been subject to a serious drought in recent decades, whose ultimate cause remains unclear. A comparison of precipitation records in the area of drought and an ice core from East Antarctica reveal a significant inverse correlation between precipitation in the two locations, and suggest that the current drought may be highly unusual compared with the past 750 years of variability.

    • Tas D. van Ommen
    •  & Vin Morgan

  • News & Views |

    In the North Atlantic region, six massive iceberg discharge events marked the last glacial period. A numerical model now links these events to ocean temperatures and ice-shelf conditions.

    • Christina Hulbe

  • Letter |

    The last glacial period was punctuated by several periods of massive iceberg discharge from the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. Numerical simulations indicate that these discharge events are linked to an interplay between ice-sheet accumulation, marine ice-shelf stability and periodically oscillating surface ocean temperature.

    • Jorge Alvarez-Solas
    • , Sylvie Charbit
    •  & Christophe Dumas

  • Letter |

    The last glacial period was characterized by large, rapid climate fluctuations. An analysis of a speleothem from New Mexico shows that the coldest conditions over Greenland coincide with increased winter precipitation in the southwestern United States, which can be attributed to a southward displacement of the polar jet stream and the North American storm track.

    • Yemane Asmerom
    • , Victor J. Polyak
    •  & Stephen J. Burns

  • Letter |

    Periodic iceberg discharges during the last glacial period led to a slowdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Sediment records from the Portuguese margin show that similar events punctuated the penultimate glacial period as well, although their duration and broader climatic impacts were modified by different background climate conditions.

    • V. Margari
    • , L. C. Skinner
    •  & N. J. Shackleton

  • Letter |

    The atmospheric response to millennial-scale circulation changes in the North Atlantic Ocean during the last glacial period has been difficult to constrain. Cave deposits from southwestern North America reveal that atmospheric moisture in this region increased in response to slowdowns of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

    • J. D. M. Wagner
    • , J. E. Cole
    •  & H. R. Barnett

  • Letter |

    Throughout the most recent glacial period sea level fluctuated by 20–30 m. Climate model simulations indicate that the barrier to water exchange between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans posed by the Bering Strait during low sea levels could have been instrumental in generating these fluctuations.

    • Aixue Hu
    • , Gerald A. Meehl
    •  & Nan Rosenbloom

  • News & Views |

    The effect of rising greenhouse-gas emissions on climate is not uniform across the globe. An analysis of the mechanisms behind model-projected changes in ocean temperature gives greater confidence in the pattern of tropical warming and its potential impacts.

    • Amy C. Clement
    • , Andrew C. Baker
    •  & Julie Leloup

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