Abstract
Climate changes in the North Atlantic region during the last glacial cycle were dominated by the slow waxing and waning of the North American ice sheet as well as by intermittent, millennial-scale Dansgaard–Oeschger climate oscillations. However, prior to the last deglaciation, the responses of North American vegetation and biomass burning to these climate variations are uncertain. Ammonium in Greenland ice cores, a product from North American soil emissions and biomass burning events, can help to fill this gap. Here we use continuous, high-resolution measurements of ammonium concentrations between 110,000 to 10,000 years ago from the Greenland NGRIP and GRIP ice cores to reconstruct North American wildfire activity and soil ammonium emissions. We find that on orbital timescales soil emissions increased under warmer climate conditions when vegetation expanded northwards into previously ice-covered areas. For millennial-scale interstadial warm periods during Marine Isotope Stage 3, the fire recurrence rate increased in parallel to the rapid warmings, whereas soil emissions rose more slowly, reflecting slow ice shrinkage and delayed ecosystem changes. We conclude that sudden warming events had little impact on soil ammonium emissions and ammonium transport to Greenland, but did result in a substantial increase in the frequency of North American wildfires.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Daniau, A.-L., Harrison, S. P. & Bartlein, P. J. Fire regimes during the Last Glacial. Quat. Sci. Rev. 29, 2918–2930 (2010).
McConnell, J. R. et al. 20th-century industrial black carbon emissions altered Arctic climate forcing. Science 317, 1381–1384 (2007).
Grant, K. M. et al. Rapid coupling between ice volume and polar temperature over the past 150,000 years. Nature 491, 744–747 (2012).
North Greenland Ice Core Project members. High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period. Nature 431, 147–151 (2004).
Kindler, P. et al. Temperature reconstruction from 10 to 120 kyr b2k from the NGRIP ice core. Clim. Past 10, 887–902 (2014).
Baumgartner, M. et al. NGRIP CH4 concentration from 120 to 10 kyr before present and its relation to a δ15N temperature reconstruction from the same ice core. Clim. Past 10, 903–920 (2014).
Wang, Y. et al. Millennial- and orbital-scale changes in the East Asian monsoon over the past 224,000 years. Nature 451, 1090–1093 (2008).
Fischer, H., Siggaard-Andersen, M.-L., Ruth, U., Röthlisberger, R. & Wolff, E. Glacial/interglacial changes in mineral dust and sea salt records in polar ice cores: Sources, transport, deposition. Rev. Geophys. 45, RG1002 (2007).
Mayewski, P. A. et al. Major features and forcing of high-latitude Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation using a 110,000-year-long glaciochemical series. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 26345–26366 (1997).
Jimenez-Moreno, G. et al. Millennial-scale variability during the last glacial in vegetation records from North America. Quat. Sci. Rev. 29, 2865–2881 (2010).
Asmerom, Y., Polyak, V. J. & Burns, S. J. Variable winter moisture in the southwestern United States linked to rapid glacial climate shifts. Nature Geosci. 3, 114–117 (2010).
Sionneau, T. et al. Atmospheric re-organization during Marine Isotope Stage 3 over the North American continent: Sedimentological and mineralogical evidence from the Gulf of Mexico. Quat. Sci. Rev. 81, 62–73 (2013).
Whitlock, C. & Bartlein, P. J. Vegetation and climate change in northwest America during the past 125 kyr. Nature 388, 57–61 (1997).
Grimm, E. C., Jacobson, G. L., Watts, W. A., Hansen, B. C. S. & Maasch, K. A. A 50,000-year record of climate oscillations from Florida and its temporal correlation with the Heinrich events. Science 261, 198–200 (1993).
Marlon, J. R. et al. Wildfire responses to abrupt climate change in North America. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 2519–2524 (2009).
Fuhrer, K., Neftel, A., Anklin, M., Staffelbach, T. & Legrand, M. High resolution ammonium ice core record covering a complete glacial–interglacial cycle. J. Geophys. Res. 101, 4147–4164 (1996).
Hansson, M. & Holmen, K. High latitude biospheric activity during the last glacial cycle revealed by ammonium variations in Greenland ice cores. Geophys. Res. Lett. 29, 4239–4242 (2001).
Zennaro, P. et al. Fire in ice: Two millennia of boreal forest fire history from the Greenland NEEM ice core. Clim. Past 10, 1905–1924 (2014).
Savarino, J. & Legrand, M. High northern latitude forest fires and vegetation emissions over the last millennium inferred from the chemistry of a central Greenland ice core. J. Geophys. Res. 103, 8267–8279 (1998).
Dentener, F. J. & Crutzen, P. J. A three-dimensional model of the global ammonia cycle. J. Atmos. Chem. 19, 331–369 (1994).
Gfeller, G. et al. Representativeness of major ions measurements and seasonality derived from NEEM firn cores. Cryosphere 8, 1855–1870 (2014).
Kehrwald, N. et al. Levoglucosan as a specific marker of fire events in Greenland snow. Tellus B 64, 18196 (2012).
Jaffrezo, J.-L. et al. Biomass burning signatures in the atmosphere of central Greenland. J. Geophys. Res. 103, 31067–31078 (1998).
Legrand, M. & De Angelis, M. Light carbolyxic acids in Greenland ice: A record of past forest fires and vegetation emissions from the boreal zone. J. Geophys. Res. 101, 4129–4145 (1996).
Röthlisberger, R. et al. Technique for continuous high-resolution analysis of trace substances in firn and ice cores. Environ. Sci. Technol. 34, 338–342 (2000).
Kaufmann, P. et al. An improved continuous flow analysis (CFA) system for high-resolution field measurements on ice cores. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42, 8044–8050 (2008).
Pausata, F. S. R., Li, C., Wettstein, J. J., Kageyama, M. & Nisancioglu, K. H. The key role of topography in altering North Atlantic atmospheric circulation during the last glacial period. Clim. Past 7, 1089–1101 (2011)10.5194/cp-7-1089-2011
Kageyama, M. et al. Glacial climate sensitivity to different states of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: Results from the IPSL model. Clim. Past 5, 551–570 (2009).
Zhang, X., Lohmann, G., Knorr, G. & Purcell, C. Abrupt glacial climate shifts controlled by ice sheet changes. Nature 512, 290–294 (2014).
Steffensen, J. P. et al. High-resolution Greenland ice core data show abrupt climate change happens in few years. Science 321, 680–684 (2008).
EPICA community members. One-to-one coupling of glacial climate variability in Greenland and Antarctica. Nature 444, 195–198 (2006).
Rasmussen, S. O. et al. A stratigraphic framework for abrupt climatic changes during the Last Glacial period based on three synchronized Greenland ice-core records: Refining and extending the INTIMATE event stratigraphy. Quat. Sci. Rev. 106, 14–28 (2014).
Seierstad, I. K. et al. Consistently dated records from the Greenland GRIP, GISP2 and NGRIP ice cores for the past 104 ka reveal regional millennial-scale δ18O gradients with possible Heinrich event imprint. Quat. Sci. Rev. 106, 29–46 (2014).
Wolff, E. W., Chappellaz, J., Blunier, T., Rasmussen, S. O. & Svensson, A. Millennial-scale variability during the last glacial: The ice core record. Quat. Sci. Rev. 29, 2828–2838 (2010).
Rasmussen, S. O. et al. A new Greenland ice core chronology for the last glacial termination. J. Geophys. Res. 111, D06102 (2006).
Svensson, A. et al. A 60 000 year Greenland stratigraphic ice core chronology. Clim. Past 4, 47–57 (2008).
Bergin, M. H. et al. The contributions of snow, fog, and dry deposition to the summer flux of anions and cations at Summit, Greenland. J. Geophys. Res. 100, 16275–16288 (1995).
Davidson, C. I., Bergin, M. H. & Kuhns, H. D. in Chemical Exchange Between the Atmosphere and Polar Snow Vol. 43 (eds Wolff, E. W. & Bales, R. C.) 275–306 (NATO ASI Series, Springer, 1996).
NEEM community members. Eemian interglacial reconstructed from a Greenland folded ice core. Nature 493, 489–494 (2013).
Acknowledgements
The authors of this paper are indebted to the late D. Wagenbach, who contributed to and inspired this research in numerous discussions. This paper has also greatly benefited from the Sir Nicholas Shackleton fellowship, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK, awarded to H.F. in 2014. The Division for Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern acknowledges the long-term financial support of ice core research by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research. E.W.W. is supported by a Royal Society professorship. NGRIP is directed and organized by the Department of Geophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute for Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics, University of Copenhagen. It is supported by funding agencies in Denmark (SNF), Belgium (FNRS-CFB), France (IPEV and INSU/CNRS), Germany (AWI), Iceland (RannIs), Japan (MEXT), Sweden (SPRS), Switzerland (SNSF) and the USA (NSF, Office of Polar Programs).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
M.B. and R.R. performed the CFA measurements in the field at NGRIP, and together with S.S. carried out raw data analysis. H.F. developed the time series analysis approach, and together with R.M. and E.W.W. developed the concept for reconstruction of atmospheric concentrations. G.G. provided the back-trajectory analysis used in the transport model, T.E. contributed to the deposition model. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the interpretation and to the manuscript, which was written by H.F.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (PDF 1789 kb)
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (XLSX 50 kb)
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (XLSX 3737 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fischer, H., Schüpbach, S., Gfeller, G. et al. Millennial changes in North American wildfire and soil activity over the last glacial cycle. Nature Geosci 8, 723–727 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2495
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2495
This article is cited by
-
Sedimentary record from Patagonia, southern Chile supports cosmic-impact triggering of biomass burning, climate change, and megafaunal extinctions at 12.8 ka
Scientific Reports (2019)
-
Will Landscape Fire Increase in the Future? A Systems Approach to Climate, Fire, Fuel, and Human Drivers
Current Pollution Reports (2019)
-
Aerosol-Climate Interactions During the Last Glacial Maximum
Current Climate Change Reports (2018)
-
Greenland records of aerosol source and atmospheric lifetime changes from the Eemian to the Holocene
Nature Communications (2018)
-
Recent Advances and Remaining Uncertainties in Resolving Past and Future Climate Effects on Global Fire Activity
Current Climate Change Reports (2016)