Surface and Deep Ocean Interactions During the Cold Climate Event 8200 Years Ago

Evidence from a North Atlantic deep-sea sediment core reveals that the largest climatic perturbation in our present interglacial, the 8200-year event, is marked by two distinct cooling events in the subpolar North Atlantic at 8490 and 8290 years ago. An associated reduction in deep flow speed provid...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Ellison, Christopher R. W., Chapman, Mark R., Hall, Ian R.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2006
Subjects:
Ice Sheet
North Atlantic
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1127213
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1127213
Description
Summary:Evidence from a North Atlantic deep-sea sediment core reveals that the largest climatic perturbation in our present interglacial, the 8200-year event, is marked by two distinct cooling events in the subpolar North Atlantic at 8490 and 8290 years ago. An associated reduction in deep flow speed provides evidence of a significant change to a major downwelling limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The existence of a distinct surface freshening signal during these events strongly suggests that the sequenced surface and deep ocean changes were forced by pulsed meltwater outbursts from a multistep final drainage of the proglacial lakes associated with the decaying Laurentide Ice Sheet margin.

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