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Long-term winter warming trend in the Siberian Arctic during the mid- to late Holocene

Nature Geoscience volume 8, pages 122–125 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Relative to the past 2,000 years1,2, the Arctic region has warmed significantly over the past few decades. However, the evolution of Arctic temperatures during the rest of the Holocene is less clear. Proxy reconstructions, suggest a long-term cooling trend throughout the mid- to late Holocene3,4,5, whereas climate model simulations show only minor changes or even warming6,7,8. Here we present a record of the oxygen isotope composition of permafrost ice wedges from the Lena River Delta in the Siberian Arctic. The isotope values, which reflect winter season temperatures, became progressively more enriched over the past 7,000 years, reaching unprecedented levels in the past five decades. This warming trend during the mid- to late Holocene is in opposition to the cooling seen in other proxy records3,5,9. However, most of these existing proxy records are biased towards summer temperatures. We argue that the opposing trends are related to the seasonally different orbital forcing over this interval. Furthermore, our reconstructed trend as well as the recent maximum are consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing and climate model simulations, thus reconciling differing estimates of Arctic and northern high-latitude temperature evolution during the Holocene.

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Figure 1: Temperature and climate forcing time series for the past eight millennia, showing different seasonal trends.
Figure 2: Simulated temperature change between pre-industrial and mid-Holocene.
Figure 3: Arctic temperature trends during the past two millennia.

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Acknowledgements

We greatly acknowledge numerous people involved in field and lab work, in particular L. Schoenicke and C. Springer (AWI Potsdam) for stable isotope analyses. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy’s Programme for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provided coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organisation for Earth System Science Portals. The PMIP3 Data archives are supported by CEA and CNRS. This paper is a contribution to the research programme PACES II, Topic 3 of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and to the Eurasian Arctic Ice 4k project (grant OP 217/2-1 by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft awarded to T.O.). T.L. was supported by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association (grant VG-900NH).

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Author notes

  1. Kirstin Hoffmann

    Present address: Present address: Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Periglacial Research Section, Telegrafenberg A43, 14473 Potsdam, Germany

    Hanno Meyer, Thomas Opel, Thomas Laepple & Kirstin Hoffmann

  2. Department of Geocryology, Moscow State University, Faculty of Geology, Vorob’evy Gory, 119899 Moscow, Russia

    Alexander Yu Dereviagin

  3. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Paleoclimate Dynamics Section, Bussestraße 24, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany

    Martin Werner

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Contributions

H.M., A.Y.D. and T.O. designed the study and carried out the fieldwork. H.M. and K.H. performed the stable water isotope analyses on ice wedges. H.M. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. T.L. performed the statistical analysis of the isotope and climate model data. All authors contributed to data interpretation and the preparation of the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hanno Meyer.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Meyer, H., Opel, T., Laepple, T. et al. Long-term winter warming trend in the Siberian Arctic during the mid- to late Holocene. Nature Geosci 8, 122–125 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2349

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