Changes in past atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations can be determined by measuring the composition of air trapped in ice cores from Antarctica. So far, the Antarctic Vostok and EPICA Dome C ice cores have provided a composite record of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 650,000 years. Here we present results of the lowest 200 m of the Dome C ice core, extending the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration by two complete glacial cycles to 800,000 yr before present. From previously published data and the present work, we find that atmospheric carbon dioxide is strongly correlated with Antarctic temperature throughout eight glacial cycles but with significantly lower concentrations between 650,000 and 750,000 yr before present. Carbon dioxide levels are below 180 parts per million by volume (p.p.m.v.) for a period of 3,000 yr during Marine Isotope Stage 16, possibly reflecting more pronounced oceanic carbon storage. We report the lowest carbon dioxide concentration measured in an ice core, which extends the pre-industrial range of carbon dioxide concentrations during the late Quaternary by about 10 p.p.m.v. to 172-300 p.p.m.v.

/pdf/high-resolution-carbon-dioxide-concentration-record-650-000-1w59g4a5di.pdf

High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000–800,000 years before present

. The Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) is a time scale based on annual layer counting of high-resolution records from Greenland ice cores. Whereas the Holocene part of the time scale is based on various records from the DYE-3, the GRIP, and the NorthGRIP ice cores, the glacial part is solely based on NorthGRIP records. Here we present an 18 ka extension of the time scale such that GICC05 continuously covers the past 60 ka. The new section of the time scale places the onset of Greenland Interstadial 12 (GI-12) at 46.9±1.0 ka b2k (before year AD 2000), the North Atlantic Ash Zone II layer in GI-15 at 55.4±1.2 ka b2k, and the onset of GI-17 at 59.4±1.3 ka b2k. The error estimates are derived from the accumulated number of uncertain annual layers. In the 40–60 ka interval, the new time scale has a discrepancy with the Meese-Sowers GISP2 time scale of up to 2.4 ka. Assuming that the Greenland climatic events are synchronous with those seen in the Chinese Hulu Cave speleothem record, GICC05 compares well to the time scale of that record with absolute age differences of less than 800 years throughout the 60 ka period. The new time scale is generally in close agreement with other independently dated records and reference horizons, such as the Laschamp geomagnetic excursion, the French Villars Cave and the Austrian Kleegruben Cave speleothem records, suggesting high accuracy of both event durations and absolute age estimates.

/pdf/a-60-000-year-greenland-stratigraphic-ice-core-chronology-4pm8y9au0a.pdf

A 60 000 year Greenland stratigraphic ice core chronology

Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3 deg-C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6 deg-C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 450 +/- 100 ppm, a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

/pdf/target-atmospheric-co2-where-should-humanity-aim-2d9k6zheh2.pdf

Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?

Oxygen isotope records from Chinese caves characterize changes in both the Asian monsoon and global climate. Here, using our new speleothem data, we extend the Chinese record to cover the full uranium/thorium dating range, that is, the past 640,000 years. The record’s length and temporal precision allow us to test the idea that insolation changes caused by the Earth’s precession drove the terminations of each of the last seven ice ages as well as the millennia-long intervals of reduced monsoon rainfall associated with each of the terminations. On the basis of our record’s timing, the terminations are separated by four or five precession cycles, supporting the idea that the ‘100,000-year’ ice age cycle is an average of discrete numbers of precession cycles. Furthermore, the suborbital component of monsoon rainfall variability exhibits power in both the precession and obliquity bands, and is nearly in anti-phase with summer boreal insolation. These observations indicate that insolation, in part, sets the pace of the occurrence of millennial-scale events, including those associated with terminations and ‘unfinished terminations’. Records of the Asian monsoon have been extended to 640,000 years ago, and confirm both that the 100,000-year ice age cycle results from integral numbers of precessional cycles and that insolation influences the pacing of major millennial-scale climate events. Prior records of the Asian monsoon have revealed cyclic variations over hundreds of thousands of years, probably driven by variations in insolation caused by the precession of Earth's orbit. Hai Cheng and colleagues now provide a speleothem record from Chinese cave samples that extends earlier records to 640,000 years ago, close to the maximum age possible with uranium/thorium dating. This spectacular record confirms that the characteristic '100,000-year' ice age cycle corresponds to an integral number (four or five) of precession cycles, and that insolation influences millennial-scale variations in monsoon strength.

/pdf/the-asian-monsoon-over-the-past-640-000-years-and-ice-age-4awt4tgm4n.pdf

The Asian monsoon over the past 640,000 years and ice age terminations

We conducted the first synchronously coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model simulation from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Bolling-Allerod (BA) warming. Our model reproduces several major features of the deglacial climate evolution, suggesting a good agreement in climate sensitivity between the model and observations. In particular, our model simulates the abrupt BA warming as a transient response of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to a sudden termination of freshwater discharge to the North Atlantic before the BA. In contrast to previous mechanisms that invoke AMOC multiple equilibrium and Southern Hemisphere climate forcing, we propose that the BA transition is caused by the superposition of climatic responses to the transient CO 2 forcing, the AMOC recovery from Heinrich Event 1, and an AMOC overshoot.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/325/5938/310.full.pdf

Transient Simulation of Last Deglaciation with a New Mechanism for Bølling-Allerød Warming

A high-resolution deuterium profile is now available along the entire European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica Dome C ice core, extending this climate record back to marine isotope stage 20.2, ∼800,000 years ago. Experiments performed with an atmospheric general circulation model including water isotopes support its temperature interpretation. We assessed the general correspondence between Dansgaard-Oeschger events and their smoothed Antarctic counterparts for this Dome C record, which reveals the presence of such features with similar amplitudes during previous glacial periods. We suggest that the interplay between obliquity and precession accounts for the variable intensity of interglacial periods in ice core records.

/pdf/orbital-and-millennial-antarctic-climate-variability-over-2b1gno7vzx.pdf

Orbital and Millennial Antarctic Climate Variability over the Past 800,000 Years

/pdf/sub-millennial-climate-variability-during-mis-11-revealed-by-1suqgnetzz.pdf

O. Cattani

Papers

Orbital and Millennial Antarctic Climate Variability over the Past 800,000 Years

Sub-millennial climate variability during MIS 11 revealed by high resolution EPICA Dome C isotopic data - a comparison with the Holocene