Northward shift of the southern westerlies during the Antarctic Cold Reversal

• Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews
• Main Authors: Fletcher, M.-S., Pedro, J., Hall, T., Mariani, M., Alexander, J.A., Beck, K., Blaauw, Maarten, Hodgson, D., Heijnis, H., Gadd, P., Lisé-Pronovost, Agathe
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action; name=SDG 13 - Climate Action; Antarc*; Antarctic; North Atlantic; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/fe71717c-b68e-4418-beb8-48e78fb14f0c; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107189; https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/files/248894308/north_6.pdf

Inter-hemispheric asynchrony of climate change through the last deglaciation has been theoretically linked to latitudinal shifts in the southern westerlies via their influence over CO 2 out-gassing from the Southern Ocean. Proxy-based reconstructions disagree on the behaviour of the westerlies through this interval. The last deglaciation was interrupted in the Southern Hemisphere by the Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR; 14.7 to 13.0 ka BP (thousand years Before Present)), a millennial-scale cooling event that coincided with the Bølling–Allerød warm phase in the North Atlantic (BA; 14.7 to 12.7 ka BP). We present terrestrial proxy palaeoclimate data that demonstrate a migration of the westerlies during the last deglaciation. We support the hypothesis that wind-driven out-gassing of old CO2 from the Southern Ocean drove the deglacial rise in atmospheric CO2.