Relative Timing of Deglacial Climate Events in Antarctica and Greenland

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: Morgan, Vin, Delmotte, Marc, van Ommen, Tas, Jouzel, Jean, Chappellaz, Jérôme, Woon, Suenor, Masson-Delmotte, Valérie, Raynaud, Dominique
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2002
• Subjects: Antarctic; Greenland; Law Dome; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; ice core; North Atlantic; North atlantic Thermohaline circulation
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1074257; https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1074257

The last deglaciation was marked by large, hemispheric, millennial-scale climate variations: the Bølling-Allerød and Younger Dryas periods in the north, and the Antarctic Cold Reversal in the south. A chronology from the high-accumulation Law Dome East Antarctic ice core constrains the relative timing of these two events and provides strong evidence that the cooling at the start of the Antarctic Cold Reversal did not follow the abrupt warming during the northern Bølling transition around 14,500 years ago. This result suggests that southern changes are not a direct response to abrupt changes in North Atlantic thermohaline circulation, as is assumed in the conventional picture of a hemispheric temperature seesaw.