Deep-water circulation changes lead North Atlantic climate during deglaciation

Abstract

Constraining the response time of the climate system to changes in North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation is fundamental to improving climate and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation predictability. Here we report a new synchronization of terrestrial, marine, and ice-core records, which allows the first quantitative determination of the response time of North Atlantic climate to changes in high-latitude NADW formation rate during the last deglaciation. Using a continuous record of deep water ventilation from the Nordic Seas, we identify a ∼400-year lead of changes in high-latitude NADW formation ahead of abrupt climate changes recorded in Greenland ice cores at the onset and end of the Younger Dryas stadial, which likely occurred in response to gradual changes in temperature- and wind-driven freshwater transport. We suggest that variations in Nordic Seas deep-water circulation are precursors to abrupt climate changes and that future model studies should address this phasing.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Muschitiello, F. D'Andrea, W.J. Schmittner, A. Heaton, T.J. Balascio, N.L. DeRoberts, N. Caffee, M.W. Woodruff, T.E. Welten, K.C. Skinner, L.C. Simon, M.H. Dokken, T.M.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2019 The Author(s). 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:	Accepted: 26 February 2019 Published (online): 20 March 2019 Published: 20 March 2019
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	01 May 2019 13:31
Last Modified:	01 May 2019 13:31
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research (part of Springer Nature)
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-019-09237-3
Related URLs:	Author
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:144315

CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

Deep-water circulation changes lead North Atlantic climate during deglaciation

Abstract

Metadata

Download

Published Version

Export

Statistics