R EPORTS Cyclic Variation and Solar Forcing of Holocene Climate in the Alaskan Subarctic

• Main Authors: Feng Sheng Hu, Darrell Kaufman, Sumiko Yoneji, David Nelson, Aldo Shemesh, Yongsong Huang, Jian Tian, Gerard Bond, Benjamin Clegg, Thomas Brown
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic; Subarctic; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.233.2184; http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/Hu%202003.pdf

High-resolution analyses of lake sediment from southwestern Alaska reveal cyclic variations in climate and ecosystems during the Holocene. These variations occurred with periodicities similar to those of solar activity and appear to be coherent with time series of the cosmogenic nuclides 14 C and 10 Be as well as North Atlantic drift ice. Our results imply that small variations in solar irradiance induced pronounced cyclic changes in northern high-latitude environments. They also provide evidence that centennialscale shifts in the Holocene climate were similar between the subpolar regions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, possibly because of Sunocean-climate linkages. Small variations in solar output appear to have played a prominent role in the Holocene dynamics of the earth’s climate system. Although the mechanisms for Sunclimate