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Reply to: Atlantic circulation change still uncertain

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 168–170 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 17 February 2022

replying to K. H. Kilbourne et al. Nature Geoscience https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00896-4 (2022)

We thank the authors for their comment and welcome the opportunity to respond. Kilbourne et al.1 make the argument that if more proxies from the North Atlantic had been considered, the conclusion reached in Caesar et al.2 would have been different. Although it is certainly true that a comprehensive set of palaeoceanographic proxy data available in the North Atlantic region shows a complex picture of the evolution of the North Atlantic over the past two millennia3, most of these proxies are not strongly linked to the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

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Fig. 1: Overview of the different proxy data and the major climate system forcing that they may be sensitive to.
Fig. 2: Comparison of observational AMOC data and two recent AMOC reconstructions.

References

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Acknowledgements

L.C., N.C. and G.D.M. are supported by the A4 project. A4 (Grant-Aid Agreement no. PBA/CC/18/01) is carried out with the support of the Marine Institute under the Marine Research Programme funded by the Irish Government. D.J.R.T. is supported by UK NERC grant NE/S009736/1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS), Department of Geography, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland

    L. Caesar, G. D. McCarthy & N. Cahill

  2. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany

    L. Caesar & S. Rahmstorf

  3. Department of Geography, University College London, London, UK

    D. J. R. Thornalley

  4. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland

    N. Cahill

  5. Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    S. Rahmstorf

Authors
  1. L. Caesar
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  2. G. D. McCarthy
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  3. D. J. R. Thornalley
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  4. N. Cahill
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  5. S. Rahmstorf
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Contributions

L.C. created the figures and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion of and provided input to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to L. Caesar.

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Nature Geoscience thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling editor: James Super, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Caesar, L., McCarthy, G.D., Thornalley, D.J.R. et al. Reply to: Atlantic circulation change still uncertain. Nat. Geosci. 15, 168–170 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00897-3

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