A 1.5-million-year record of orbital and millennial climate variability in the North Atlantic ...

• Main Authors: Hodell, DA, Crowhurst, SJ, Lourens, L, Margari, V, Nicolson, J, Rolfe, JE, Skinner, LC, Thomas, NC, Tzedakis, PC, Mleneck-Vautravers, MJ, Wolff, EW
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus GmbH 2023
• Subjects: 37 Earth Sciences; 3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; 3705 Geology; Greenland; Shackleton; Antarc*; Antarctica; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.95076; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/347661

Abstract. Climate during the last glacial period was marked by abrupt instability on millennial timescales that included large swings of temperature in and around Greenland (Daansgard–Oeschger events) and smaller, more gradual changes in Antarctica (AIM events). Less is known about the existence and nature of similar variability during older glacial periods, especially during the early Pleistocene when glacial cycles were dominantly occurring at 41 kyr intervals compared to the much longer and deeper glaciations of the more recent period. Here, we report a continuous millennially resolved record of stable isotopes of planktic and benthic foraminifera at IODP Site U1385 (the “Shackleton Site”) from the southwestern Iberian margin for the last 1.5 million years, which includes the Middle Pleistocene Transition (MPT). Our results demonstrate that millennial climate variability (MCV) was a persistent feature of glacial climate, both before and after the MPT. Prior to 1.2 Ma in the early Pleistocene, the ...