Were last glacial climate events simultaneous between Greenland and France? A quantitative comparison using non-tuned chronologies

Several large abrupt climate fluctuations during the last glacial have been recorded in Greenland ice cores and archives from other regions. Often these Dansgaard-Oeschger events are assumed to have been synchronous over wide areas, and then used as tie-points to link chronologies between the proxy...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Quaternary Science
Main Authors: Blaauw, Maarten, Wohlfarth, B., Christen, J.A., Ampel, L., Veres, D., Hughen, K.A., Preusser, F., Svensson, A.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/250fbdcc-a120-4ba6-9c40-c246bfbbd45b
https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.1330
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77449091914&partnerID=8YFLogxK
Description
Summary:Several large abrupt climate fluctuations during the last glacial have been recorded in Greenland ice cores and archives from other regions. Often these Dansgaard-Oeschger events are assumed to have been synchronous over wide areas, and then used as tie-points to link chronologies between the proxy archives. However, it has not yet been tested independently whether or not these events were indeed synchronous over large areas. Here, we compare Dansgaard-Oeschger-type events in a well-dated record from southeastern France with those in Greenland ice cores. Instead of assuming simultaneous climate events between both archives, we keep their age models independent. Even these well-dated archives possess large chronological uncertainties that prevent us from inferring synchronous climate events at decadal to multi-centennial time scales. If possible, comparisons between proxy archives should be based on independent, non-tuned time-scales. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.