The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past]
Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) warming events occurred throughout the last glacial period. Greenland ice cores show a rapid warming during each stadial to interstadial transition, alongside abrupt loss of sea ice and major reorganisation of the atmospheric circulation. Other records also indicate simultane...
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ftnerc:oai:nora.nerc.ac.uk:536447 2024-01-14T10:07:22+01:00 The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] Slattery, John Sime, Louise C. Muschitiello, Francesco Riechers, Keno 2023-11-07 http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/536447/ https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496 unknown European Geosciences Union Slattery, John orcid:0009-0004-5233-7657 Sime, Louise C. orcid:0000-0002-9093-7926 Muschitiello, Francesco; Riechers, Keno. 2023 The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past]. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496 <https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496> Publication - Article PeerReviewed 2023 ftnerc https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496 2023-12-15T00:03:29Z Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) warming events occurred throughout the last glacial period. Greenland ice cores show a rapid warming during each stadial to interstadial transition, alongside abrupt loss of sea ice and major reorganisation of the atmospheric circulation. Other records also indicate simultaneous abrupt changes to the oceanic circulation. Recently, an advanced Bayesian ramp fitting method has been developed and used to investigate time lags between transitions in these different climate elements, with a view to determining the relative order of these changes. Here, we subject this method to a critical review. Using ice core data, climate model output, and carefully synthesised data representing DO warming events, we demonstrate that the method suffers from noise-induced bias of up to 15 years. This bias means that the method will tend to yield transition onsets that are too early, and we find that the estimated timings of noisier transitions are more strongly biased. Further investigation of DO warming event records in climate models and ice core data reveals that the bias is on the same order of magnitude as potential timing differences between the abrupt transitions of different climate elements. Additionally, we find that higher-resolution records would not reduce this bias. We conclude that time lags of less than 20 years cannot be reliably detected, as we cannot exclude the possibility that they result solely from the bias. This prevents the unambiguous determination of the temporal phasing of DO warming events. Article in Journal/Newspaper Greenland Greenland ice cores ice core Sea ice Natural Environment Research Council: NERC Open Research Archive Greenland |
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Natural Environment Research Council: NERC Open Research Archive |
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description |
Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) warming events occurred throughout the last glacial period. Greenland ice cores show a rapid warming during each stadial to interstadial transition, alongside abrupt loss of sea ice and major reorganisation of the atmospheric circulation. Other records also indicate simultaneous abrupt changes to the oceanic circulation. Recently, an advanced Bayesian ramp fitting method has been developed and used to investigate time lags between transitions in these different climate elements, with a view to determining the relative order of these changes. Here, we subject this method to a critical review. Using ice core data, climate model output, and carefully synthesised data representing DO warming events, we demonstrate that the method suffers from noise-induced bias of up to 15 years. This bias means that the method will tend to yield transition onsets that are too early, and we find that the estimated timings of noisier transitions are more strongly biased. Further investigation of DO warming event records in climate models and ice core data reveals that the bias is on the same order of magnitude as potential timing differences between the abrupt transitions of different climate elements. Additionally, we find that higher-resolution records would not reduce this bias. We conclude that time lags of less than 20 years cannot be reliably detected, as we cannot exclude the possibility that they result solely from the bias. This prevents the unambiguous determination of the temporal phasing of DO warming events. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Slattery, John Sime, Louise C. Muschitiello, Francesco Riechers, Keno |
spellingShingle |
Slattery, John Sime, Louise C. Muschitiello, Francesco Riechers, Keno The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] |
author_facet |
Slattery, John Sime, Louise C. Muschitiello, Francesco Riechers, Keno |
author_sort |
Slattery, John |
title |
The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] |
title_short |
The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] |
title_full |
The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] |
title_fullStr |
The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past] |
title_sort |
temporal phasing of rapid dansgaard–oeschger warming events cannot be reliably determined [in review, climate of the past] |
publisher |
European Geosciences Union |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/536447/ https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Greenland ice cores ice core Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Greenland Greenland ice cores ice core Sea ice |
op_relation |
Slattery, John orcid:0009-0004-5233-7657 Sime, Louise C. orcid:0000-0002-9093-7926 Muschitiello, Francesco; Riechers, Keno. 2023 The Temporal Phasing of Rapid Dansgaard–Oeschger Warming Events Cannot Be Reliably Determined [in review, Climate of the Past]. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496 <https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496> |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2496 |
_version_ |
1788061776976281600 |