Dominant Northern Hemisphere climate control over millennial-scale glacial sea-level variability

Based on a radiocarbon and paleomagnetically dated sediment record from the northern Red Sea and the exceptional sensitivity of the regional changes in the oxygen isotope composition of sea water to the sea-level-dependent water exchange with the Indian Ocean, we provide a new global sea-level recon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quaternary Science Reviews
Main Authors: Arz, Helge W., Lamy, Frank, Ganopolski, Andrey, Nowaczyk, Norbert, Paetzold, Juergen
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd 2007
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Online Access:https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00236/34700/33072.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2006.07.016
https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00236/34700/
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Summary:Based on a radiocarbon and paleomagnetically dated sediment record from the northern Red Sea and the exceptional sensitivity of the regional changes in the oxygen isotope composition of sea water to the sea-level-dependent water exchange with the Indian Ocean, we provide a new global sea-level reconstruction spanning the last glacial period. The sea-level record has been extracted from the temperature-corrected benthic stable oxygen isotopes using coral-based sea-level data as constraints for the sea-level/oxygen isotope relationship. Although, the general features of this millennial-scale sea-level records have strong similarities to the rather symmetric and gradual Southern Hemisphere climate patterns, we observe, in constrast to previous findings, pronounced sea level rises of up to 25 in to generally correspond with Northern Hemisphere warmings as recorded in Greenland ice-core interstadial intervals whereas sea-level lowstands mostly occur during cold phases. Corroborated by CLIMBER-2 model results, the close connection of millennial-scale sea-level changes to Northern Hemisphere temperature variations indicates a primary climatic control on the mass balance of the major Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and does not require a considerable Antarctic contribution.