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

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Denis-Didier Rousseau, Witold Bagniewski, Hai Cheng
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Portfolio 2023
• Subjects: Medicine; R; Science; Q; Greenland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-49115-z; https://doaj.org/article/68fbd655314b46b1832b1ff75e115daf

Abstract 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 δ18O 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.