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Muted change in Atlantic overturning circulation over some glacial-aged Heinrich events

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 144–150 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Heinrich events—surges of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean—punctuated the last glacial period. The events are associated with millennial-scale cooling in the Northern Hemisphere. Fresh water from the melting icebergs is thought to have interrupted the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, thus minimizing heat transport into the northern North Atlantic. The northward flow of warm water passes through the Florida Straits and is reflected in the distribution of seawater properties in this region. Here we investigate the northward flow through this region over the past 40,000 years using oxygen isotope measurements of benthic foraminifera from two cores on either side of the Florida Straits. These measurements allow us to estimate water density, which is related to flow through the thermal wind balance. We infer a substantial reduction of flow during Heinrich Event 1 and the Younger Dryas cooling, but little change during Heinrich Events 2 and 3, which occurred during an especially cold phase of the last glacial period. We speculate that because glacial circulation was already weakened before the onset of Heinrich Events 2 and 3, freshwater forcing had little additional effect. However, low-latitude climate perturbations were observed during all events. We therefore suggest that these perturbations may not have been directly caused by changes in heat transport associated with Atlantic overturning circulation as commonly assumed.

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Figure 1: Core locations and context.
Figure 2: Glacial and deglacial records.
Figure 3: Modelled temperature anomaly.
Figure 4: Stage 3 records.
Figure 5: Location of other records.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the US National Science Foundation (OCE-0096472, OCE-0648258 and OCE-1102743), a grant from the Comer Science and Education Foundation and a Rutt Bridges Undergraduate Research Fellowship to L.G.H. for financially supporting this work. P.C. acknowledges support from the Natural Science Foundation of China (40921004 and 40930844). S.M. was financially supported through the DFG Research Center/Cluster of Excellence ‘The Ocean in the Earth System’. We also thank T-Y. Chang for technical assistance.

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Author notes

  1. L. Gene Henry

    Present address: Present address: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30307, USA

    Jean Lynch-Stieglitz & L. Gene Henry

  2. Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA

    Matthew W. Schmidt & Ping Chang

  3. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA

    William B. Curry

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, Godwin Laboratory for Palaeoclimate Research, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK

    Luke C. Skinner

  5. MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Leobener Strasse, Bremen D-28359, Germany

    Stefan Mulitza

  6. NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA

    Rong Zhang

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Contributions

J.L-S., W.B.C., M.W.S. and L.G.H. collected and analysed the sedimentary materials from KNR166-2, L.C.S. and S.M. contributed to the benthic carbon isotope compilation and P.C. and R.Z. contributed model output. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the data and model results and participated in the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jean Lynch-Stieglitz or L. Gene Henry.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lynch-Stieglitz, J., Schmidt, M., Gene Henry, L. et al. Muted change in Atlantic overturning circulation over some glacial-aged Heinrich events. Nature Geosci 7, 144–150 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2045

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