A reliable benchmark of the last 640,000 years millennial climate variability

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Rousseau, Denis-Didier, Bagniewski, Witold, Cheng, Hai
• Other Authors: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), Columbia University New York, Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539) (LMD), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-École polytechnique (X)-École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Département des Géosciences - ENS Paris, École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: [SDU.STU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences; [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; Greenland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04378547; https://hal.science/hal-04378547/document; https://hal.science/hal-04378547/file/s41598-023-49115-z.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-49115-z

International audience How often have past climates undergone abrupt transitions? While our understanding of millennial variability during the past 130,000 years is well established, with precise dates available, such information on previous climate cycles is limited. To address this question, we identified 196 abrupt transitions in the δ 18 O record of the well-dated Chinese composite speleothem for the last 640,000 years. These results correspond to abrupt changes in the strength of the East Asian Monsoon, which align with the Greenland stadials and interstadials observed in the North Atlantic region during the last 130,000 years before present. These precise dates of past abrupt climate changes constitute a reliable and necessary benchmark for Earth System models used to study future climate scenarios.