The potential of Hudson Valley glacial floods to drive abrupt climate change

• Published in: Communications Earth & Environment
• Main Authors: Pendleton, Simon, Condron, Alan, Donnelly, Jeffrey
• Other Authors: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Support provided through the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) Postdoctoral Scholar Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2021
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; General Environmental Science; Hudson; Glacial Lake; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00228-1; https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00228-1.pdf; https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00228-1

Abstract The periodic input of meltwater into the ocean from a retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet is often hypothesized to have weakened the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and triggered several cold periods during the last deglaciation (21,000 to 8,000 years before present). Here, we use a numerical model to investigate whether the Intra-Allerød Cold Period was triggered by the drainage of Glacial Lake Iroquois, ~13,300 years ago. Performing a large suite of experiments with various combinations of single and successive, short (1 month) and long (1 year) duration flood events, we were unable to find any significant weakening of the AMOC. This result suggests that although the Hudson Valley floods occurred close to the beginning of the Intra-Allerød Cold Period, they were unlikely the sole cause. Our results have implications for re-evaluating the relationship of meltwater flood events (past and future) to periods of climatic cooling, particularly with regards to flood input location, volume, frequency, and duration.