Palaeoclimate articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dust deposition brings iron that fuels ocean productivity, a connection impacting climate over geological time. Here the authors use sediment cores to show that in contrast to dynamics today, during the last glacial maximum westerly winds shuttled dust from Australia and South America around Antarctica and into the South Pacific.

    • Torben Struve
    • , Katharina Pahnke
    •  & Gisela Winckler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solar insolation is not equally distributed on the Earth’s surface and such imbalances influence the atmospheric circulation. Here, the authors show that latitudinal insolation gradients synchronized the hydroclimate in the Northern mid-latitudes and the African and South American Monsoons throughout the Holocene.

    • Michael Deininger
    • , Frank McDermott
    •  & Denis Scholz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the El Niño Southern Oscillation depends on the background conditions is not well known. Here, the authors present individual foraminifera distributions which show that central Pacific variability is related to the warmth and depth of the thermocline across varying climate background conditions over the past ~285,000 years.

    • Gerald T. Rustic
    • , Pratigya J. Polissar
    •  & Sarah M. White

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine records indicate a greenhouse to icehouse climate transition at ~34 million years ago, but how the climate changed within continental interiors at this time is less well known. Here, the authors show an orbital climate response shift with aridification on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau during this time.

    • Hong Ao
    • , Guillaume Dupont-Nivet
    •  & Zhisheng An

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the abrupt warming events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial cycle have influenced the tropical climate is not well known. Here the authors present new lake sediment data from the Peruvian Andes that shows that these events resulted in rapid glacier retreat and large reductions in lake level.

    • Arielle Woods
    • , Donald T. Rodbell
    •  & Joseph S. Stoner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Few palaeoclimate archives beyond the polar regions preserve continuous and datable paleotemperature proxy time series over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. Here, the authors show that Mg concentrations in a subaqueous speleothem from an Italian cave track regional sea-surface temperatures over the last 350,000 years.

    • Russell Drysdale
    • , Isabelle Couchoud
    •  & Jon Woodhead

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The early Eocene was characterized by exceptionally high global temperatures and no polar ice. Here, clumped isotope paleothermometry of glendonite calcite from the Danish Basin shows that these were formed in waters below 5 °C, indicating that regionalised cool episodes punctuated the background warmth of the early Eocene.

    • Madeleine L. Vickers
    • , Sabine K. Lengger
    •  & Christoph Korte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proxy reconstructions show a decreasing trend from the Middle to Late Holocene, which conflicts with model results showing an increasing trend. Statistical analysis of model output shows that these conflicting results originate from two distinct modes of variability, which dominate at different regions and times.

    • Jürgen Bader
    • , Johann Jungclaus
    •  & Martin Claussen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationship between atmospheric CO2 and climate during the Eocene greenhouse remains uncertain. Here authors show that Eocene CO2 and climate sensitivity was high during the warmest intervals and declined as global climate cooled, with implications for the Earth’s future warming climate.

    • E. Anagnostou
    • , E. H. John
    •  & G. L. Foster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dust emissions are likely to increase significantly when land vegetation is absent, such as during the Precambrian period. Here, the authors use climate simulations to find that high dust emissions in the Precambrian could have cooled the global climate by ~10 °C.

    • Peng Liu
    • , Yonggang Liu
    •  & Yongyun Hu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some palaeotemperature proxies suffer from inaccuracies related to kinetic fractionations occurring during carbonate mineral growth. Here, the authors show that dual clumped isotope thermometry can identify the origin of these kinetic biases and allows for the reconstruction of accurate environmental temperatures.

    • David Bajnai
    • , Weifu Guo
    •  & Jens Fiebig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Northeast Atlantic climate shifted into the Quaternary Ice Age around 2.6 Myr ago. Here, the authors use 3D seismic data from the northern North Sea to document detailed changes in continental-margin sedimentary architecture spanning the transition from a fluvially dominated environment to an icehouse world.

    • H. Løseth
    • , J. A. Dowdeswell
    •  & D. Ottesen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The environmental changes at the Permian–Triassic boundary are thought to have been caused primarily by volcanic eruptions. Here the authors develop a model to show that the loss of ecosystems on land and consequent massive terrestrial biomass oxidation triggered large biogeochemical changes in the oceans at the time of the marine mass extinction.

    • Jacopo Dal Corso
    • , Benjamin J. W. Mills
    •  & Paul B. Wignall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impact of late Pleistocene climate change on ecosystems has been hard to assess. Here, the authors sequence ancient DNA from Hall’s Cave, Texas and find that both plant and vertebrate diversity decreased with cooling, and though plant diversity recovered with rewarming, megafauna went extinct.

    • Frederik V. Seersholm
    • , Daniel J. Werndly
    •  & Michael Bunce

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The early Earth’s atmosphere had very low oxygen levels for hundreds of millions of years, until the 2.4 Ga Great Oxidation Event, which remains poorly understood. Here, the authors show that reducing Archean volcanic gases could have prevented atmospheric O2 from accumulating, and therefore mantle oxidation was likely very important in setting the evolution of O2 and aerobic life.

    • Shintaro Kadoya
    • , David C. Catling
    •  & Ariel D. Anbar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biosphere productivity is an important component of the CO2 cycle, but how it has varied over past glacial-interglacial cycles is not well known. Here, the authors present new data that shows that global biosphere productivity was 10 to 30% higher during Termination V compared to younger deglaciations.

    • Margaux Brandon
    • , Amaelle Landais
    •  & Thomas Blunier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the development of human societies is influenced through their ecological environment and climatic conditions has been the subject of intensive debate. Here, the authors present multi-proxy data from southern Scandinavia which suggests that pre-agricultural population growth there was likely influenced by enhanced marine production.

    • J. P. Lewis
    • , D. B. Ryves
    •  & S. Juggins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tidewater glaciers in fjords can advance/retreat independent of climate due to stabilization by sediments at their termini. We show that an Alaskan paleo-ice stream behaved similarly on an open shelf, suggesting that increased sediment flux may delay catastrophic retreat of outlet glaciers in a warming world.

    • Ellen A. Cowan
    • , Sarah D. Zellers
    •  & Stewart J. Fallon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many major mass extinction events have been associated with large volcanic eruption events, with the argument that large volumes of volcanic degassing could trigger past global climate changes. Here, the authors find that during the end-Triassic extinction event volcanic pulses emitted large amounts of CO2 comparable to projected anthropogenic emissions for the 21st century in the future 2 °C warming scenario.

    • Manfredo Capriolo
    • , Andrea Marzoli
    •  & Csaba Szabó

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the Asian monsoon, earth surface processes and human development interact is not well known. Here, a new record of dust storm intensity shows a relationship between the stability of dynasties and dust storm activity for the last ~2200 years, which argues for a strong human control of dust storms in East Asia over this time.

    • Fahu Chen
    • , Shengqian Chen
    •  & Jianbao Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    What drives hydroclimate changes in tropical regions is not well known. Here, the authors present a 12,000 year long precipitation record from Guetemala which shows that exceeding a threshold in sea surface temperatures caused Central American rainfall to change from a dry to an active convective regime around 9000 years ago.

    • Amos Winter
    • , Davide Zanchettin
    •  & Carla Taricco

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Southern Ocean plays a key role in glacial-interglacial transitions and today, Weddell Sea derived Antarctic Bottom Water is one of the most important deep water masses. New records show that in contrast to today, no Weddell Sea water was exported during the last two glacial maxima, providing new insights towards the condition of Antarctic Bottom Water formation in extreme climate states.

    • Huang Huang
    • , Marcus Gutjahr
    •  & Gerhard Kuhn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors use planktic foraminiferal data to reconstruct ocean carbonate chemistry and temperature from 16.5 to 11 Ma from a size in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean to look at the causes of the Monterey Excursion (ME). They find a positive relationship between dissolved inorganic (DIC) carbon and the ME and a negative one for DIC and the carbon maxima events.

    • S. M. Sosdian
    • , T. L. Babila
    •  & C. H. Lear

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wind changes the surface of the Earth, but the surface characteristics of the planet also impact the winds above it. Here, the authors propose a feedback process in which wind erosion in the western Gobi Desert alters the thermal properties of the surface, which in turn increases near-surface winds.

    • Jordan T. Abell
    • , Alex Pullen
    •  & Gisela Winckler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, a new analytical technique is employed to measure Kr and Xe isotopes in groundwater at high precision. These measurements indicate that gravitational signals of past water-table depth are preserved in ancient groundwater, representing a novel proxy for past terrestrial hydroclimate.

    • Alan M. Seltzer
    • , Jessica Ng
    •  & Jeffrey P. Severinghaus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relative role of the Deccan Traps volcanic activity versus the role of the Chicxulub impact event in terms of potential contributions to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction has been subject to longstanding debate. Here, the authors observe a global signal of abruptly increased ocean temperatures and elevated [Hg] in the same biogenic carbonate specimens, prior to the impact event but aligning with the onset of Deccan volcanism.

    • Kyle W. Meyer
    • , Sierra V. Petersen
    •  & Ian Z. Winkelstern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Past Indian summer monsoon (ISM) changes are not well understood. The application of an energetic framework to a transient model simulation shows that ISM influences have changed in the past, with rising water vapor more important during deglaciation, whereas cloud feedbacks dominated during the Holocene.

    • Chetankumar Jalihal
    • , Jayaraman Srinivasan
    •  & Arindam Chakraborty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum constitutes one of the largest climate perturbations in Earth’s history, but its exact causes are not well known. New estimates of greenhouse gas fluxes from the North Atlantic Igneous Province at high temporal resolution show that they could have initiated this event.

    • Stephen M. Jones
    • , Murray Hoggett
    •  & Tom Dunkley Jones

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate-induced poleward shifts in plant distributions could flatten latitudinal diversity gradients. However, here the authors show that the spread of forests after the last ice age reduced diversity in central and northern Europe, and that human land-use over the past 5000 years strengthened the latitudinal gradient in plant diversity.

    • Thomas Giesecke
    • , Steffen Wolters
    •  & Simon Brewer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Asian summer monsoons and their links to global temperature changes have been the subject of intense debate. Here the authors reconstruct the Asian monsoon climate since the late Miocene, using plant silica records of C4 and C3 grasses in central China, and find that global cooling caused Asian monsoon rainfall to decrease markedly in the late Pliocene.

    • Hanlin Wang
    • , Huayu Lu
    •  & Yichao Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (c. 55 million years ago) was a period associated with massive carbon injection into the atmosphere, yet discrepancies in carbon isotope proxy records have led to substantial uncertainties in the source, scale, and timing of carbon emissions. Here, the authors propose that membrane lipids of marine planktonic archaea can reliably record the carbon isotope excursion and surface ocean warming, giving a new constraint for the source and size of the PETM carbon emissions.

    • Felix J. Elling
    • , Julia Gottschalk
    •  & Ann Pearson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Accurate measurements of the past extent of the Greenland ice sheet are crucial to understand its response to changing climate conditions. Here, the authors present a dust record from an ice core from the east coast of Greenland to provide detailed time constraints on ice sheet advance and retreat over the last interglacials.

    • Marius Folden Simonsen
    • , Giovanni Baccolo
    •  & Paul Vallelonga

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate dynamics in Earth’s distant history can provide important forecasting for future changes, but uncertainties in proxy-derived carbon dioxide results are common. Here Da and colleagues present a refined paleosol proxy for carbon dioxide reconstruction, and report persistently low levels ( < 300 ppm) throughout the Pleistocene interglacials.

    • Jiawei Da
    • , Yi Ge Zhang
    •  & Junfeng Ji

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There was extensive degradation during the warm middle Holocene and permafrost area was reduced substantially. Here the authors synthesize data across the Tibetan permafrost region and find that paleoclimate is more important than modern climate in shaping current permafrost carbon distribution, and its importance increases with soil depth.

    • Jinzhi Ding
    • , Tao Wang
    •  & Lin Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine sediment cores from east of Africa show that Sahara dust fluxes decreased by at least 50% between the last deglaciation and the mid Holocene, while the Northern Sector of the Red Sea remained unchanged. This constrains the African Humid Period impact to have extended up to ca. 22°N, across a more limited region than previously thought.

    • Daniel Palchan
    •  & Adi Torfstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proxies of deep circulation suggest that the onset or strengthening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation occurred at the Eocene-Oligocene Transition. The authors show, using a paleoclimate model of the late Eocene, that a shift from Pacific to Atlantic overturning can be triggered at this time by closing the Arctic–Atlantic gateway.

    • David K. Hutchinson
    • , Helen K. Coxall
    •  & Agatha M. de Boer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How global climatic changes are translated into ice-sheet fluctuations and sea-level change is not well understood. Here the authors present a compilation of empirical data and numerical modelling results of pre-LGM Northern Hemisphere ice sheet changes and show pronounced ice-sheet asymmetry within the last glacial cycle and significant variations in ice-marginal positions between older glacial cycles.

    • Christine L. Batchelor
    • , Martin Margold
    •  & Andrea Manica

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sea-level rise threatens coastal mangroves, with global consequences for these important blue carbon sinks. Here the authors analyse four Holocene sediment cores from islands in Florida Bay and find that mangroves that comprised the South Florida coastline 4–3000 years ago rapidly transitioned to estuarine conditions, despite low rates of sea-level rise, and propose that their demise was driven by high climate variability.

    • Miriam C. Jones
    • , G. Lynn Wingard
    •  & Christopher E. Bernhardt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Model simulations show that tropical cyclones were preferably formed in the Southern Hemisphere during the warmer Early Eocene, but then shifted along a cooling climate across the Cenozoic to the Northern Hemisphere. Today's conditions favoring the western North Pacific as the largest genesis center is a result of closing tropical seaways during the Pliocene.

    • Qing Yan
    • , Robert Korty
    •  & Huijun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    δ18O of speleothems are a widely used paleoclimate proxy. Here, the authors conduct a global analysis of cave drip water δ18O compositions and find that drip waters from warmer climates have a seasonal bias toward precipitation δ18O of recharge periods, unlike in cooler climates where drip waters match well with recharge-weighted δ18O.

    • Andy Baker
    • , Andreas Hartmann
    •  & Martin Werner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of complex animal life in the Cambrian period is thought to be related to oxygenation of the Earth System, however the timing, magnitude and mechanism of this oxygenation event remain uncertain. Here, the authors use a biogeochemical model which links tectonic CO2 degassing rates to carbon and sulphur burial, and suggest that atmospheric pO2 increased by ~50% during the Ediacaran Period.

    • Joshua J. Williams
    • , Benjamin J. W. Mills
    •  & Timothy M. Lenton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The basic mechanisms behind the East Asian Summer Monsoon remain poorly understood. Using proxy-based reconstructions and simulations, here the authors show that changes in the orientation and position of the westerly jet stream resulted in regionally asynchronous Holocene precipitation maxima.

    • Ulrike Herzschuh
    • , Xianyong Cao
    •  & Zhuo Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Atmospheric CO2 is governed by CO2 gains (e.g., via Southern Ocean outgassing) and losses (e.g., via North Atlantic absorption). Using a novel method to estimate air–sea CO2 exchange signals, the authors show that North Atlantic CO2 absorption became more efficient and contributed to lowering atmospheric CO2 during ice ages.

    • J. Yu
    • , L. Menviel
    •  & A. P. Roberts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional precipitation isotope archives (e.g., ice cores) are fundamental to our knowledge of past climate but limited to glaciated locales. Here the authors show that pore ice in relict permafrost holds equal promise as a proxy and use it to provide insights on the Holocene summer climate history of northwestern Canada.

    • Trevor J. Porter
    • , Spruce W. Schoenemann
    •  & Duane G. Froese

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