Ng, HC, Robinson, LF, McManus, JF et al. (5 more authors) (2018) Coherent deglacial changes in western Atlantic Ocean circulation. Nature Communications, 9. 2947. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Abrupt climate changes in the past have been attributed to variations in Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) strength. However, the exact timing and magnitude of past AMOC shifts remain elusive, which continues to limit our understanding of the driving mechanisms of such climate variability. Here we show a consistent signal of the 231Pa/230Th proxy that reveals a spatially coherent picture of western Atlantic circulation changes over the last deglaciation, during abrupt millennial-scale climate transitions. At the onset of deglaciation, we observe an early slowdown of circulation in the western Atlantic from around 19 to 16.5 thousand years ago (ka), consistent with the timing of accelerated Eurasian ice melting. The subsequent weakened AMOC state persists for over a millennium (~16.5–15 ka), during which time there is substantial ice rafting from the Laurentide ice sheet. This timing indicates a role for melting ice in driving a two-step AMOC slowdown, with a positive feedback sustaining continued iceberg calving and climate change during Heinrich Stadial 1.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC UNSPECIFIED NERC NE/K008536/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2018 12:11 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:25 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-018-05312-3 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:132789 |