Eemian interglacial reconstructed from a Greenland folded ice core

• Published in: Nature
• Main Authors: Dahl-Jensen, D., Albert, M. R., Aldahan, A., Azuma, N., Balslev-Clausen, D., Baumgartner, M., Berggren, A. M., Bigler, M., Binder, T., Blunier, T., Bourgeois, J. C., Brook, E. J., Buchardt, S. L., Buizert, C., Capron, E., Chappellaz, J., Chung, J., Clausen, H. B., Cvijanovic, I., Davies, S. M., Ditlevsen, P., Eicher, O., Fischer, H., Fisher, D. A., Fleet, L. G., Gfeller, G., Gkinis, V., Gogineni, S., Goto-Azuma, K., Grinsted, A., Gudlaugsdottir, H., Guillevic, M., Hansen, S. B., Hansson, M., Hirabayashi, M., Hong, S., Hur, S. D., Huybrechts, P., Hvidberg, C. S., Iizuka, Y., Jenk, T., Johnsen, S. J., Jones, T. R., Jouzel, J., Karlsson, N. B., Kawamura, K., Keegan, K., Kettner, E., Kipfstuhl, S., Kjaer, H. A., Koutnik, M., Kuramoto, T., Koehler, P., Laepple, T., Landais, A., Langen, P. L., Larsen, L. B., Leuenberger, D., Leuenberger, M., Leuschen, C., Li, J., Lipenkov, V., Martinerie, P., Maselli, O. J., Masson-Delmotte, V., McConnell, J. R., Miller, H., Mini, O., Miyamoto, A., Montagnat-Rentier, M., Mulvaney, R., Muscheler, R., Orsi, A. J., Paden, J., Panton, C., Pattyn, F., Petit, J. R., Pol, K., Popp, T., Possnert, G., Prie, F., Prokopiou, M., Quiquet, A., Rasmussen, S. O., Raynaud, D., Ren, J., Reutenauer, C., Ritz, C., Rockmann, T., Rosen, J. L., Rubino, M., Rybak, O., Samyn, D., Sapart, C. J., Schilt, A., Schmidt, A. M. Z., Schwander, J., Schuepbach, S., Seierstad, I., Severinghaus, J. P., Wolff, E. W.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2013
• Subjects: 01 - Climate Change and Earth-Ocean Atmosphere Systems; Antarctic; Greenland; Antarc*; Greenland ice core; ice core; Ice Sheet; North Greenland
• Online Access: http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/2811/; http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/2811/1/nature11789-f1.2.jpg; http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/2811/2/EW_nature11789.pdf; http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/full/nature11789.html#; https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11789

Efforts to extract a Greenland ice core with a complete record of the Eemian interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) have until now been unsuccessful. The response of the Greenland ice sheet to the warmer-than-present climate of the Eemian has thus remained unclear. Here we present the new North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (‘NEEM’) ice core and show only a modest ice-sheet response to the strong warming in the early Eemian. We reconstructed the Eemian record from folded ice using globally homogeneous parameters known from dated Greenland and Antarctic ice-core records. On the basis of water stable isotopes, NEEM surface temperatures after the onset of the Eemian (126,000 years ago) peaked at 8 ± 4 degrees Celsius above the mean of the past millennium, followed by a gradual cooling that was probably driven by the decreasing summer insolation. Between 128,000 and 122,000 years ago, the thickness of the northwest Greenland ice sheet decreased by 400 ± 250 metres, reaching surface elevations 122,000 years ago of 130 ± 300 metres lower than the present. Extensive surface melt occurred at the NEEM site during the Eemian, a phenomenon witnessed when melt layers formed again at NEEM during the exceptional heat of July 2012. With additional warming, surface melt might become more common in the future.