Variability of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation during the last interglacial period

Jess F. Adkins§, Edward A. Boyle, Lloyd Keigwin and Elsa Cortijo
Additional contact information
Jess F. Adkins§: Massachusets Institute of Technology
Edward A. Boyle: Massachusets Institute of Technology
Lloyd Keigwin: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Elsa Cortijo: Centre des Faibles Radioactivitis, Laboratoire mixte CNRS-CEA

Nature, 1997, vol. 390, issue 6656, 154-156

Abstract: Abstract Studies of natural climate variability are essential for evaluating its future evolution. Greenland ice cores suggest that the modern warm period (the Holocene) has been relatively stable for the past 9,000 years1,2. Much less is known about other warm interglacial periods, which comprise less than 10% of the climate record during the past 2.5 million years3,4,5,6,7. Here we present high-resolution ocean sediment records of surface and deep-water variables from the Bermuda Rise spanning the last interglacial period, about 118,000–127,000 years ago. In general, deep-water chemical changes are coincident with transitions in surface climate at this site. The records do not show any substantial fluctuations relative to the much higher variability observed during the preceding and subsequent cool climates. The relatively stable interglacial period begins and ends with abrupt changes in deep-water flow. We estimate, using 230Th measurements to constrain the chronology, that transitions occur in less than 400 years.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/36540 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:390:y:1997:i:6656:d:10.1038_36540

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/36540

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().