Millennial-scale atmospheric CO 2 variations during the Marine Isotope Stage 6 period (190–135 ka)

• Published in: Climate of the Past
• Main Authors: Shin, Jinhwa, Nehrbass-Ahles, Christoph, Grilli, Roberto, Chowdhry Beeman, Jai, Parrenin, Frédéric, Teste, Grégory, Landais, Amaelle, Schmidely, Loïc, Silva, Lucas, Schmitt, Jochen, Bereiter, Bernhard, Stocker, Thomas, Fischer, Hubertus, Chappellaz, Jérôme
• Other Authors: Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: [SDE]Environmental Sciences; [SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; EPICA; ice core; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03418318; https://hal.science/hal-03418318/document; https://hal.science/hal-03418318/file/millennial-scale-atmospheric-co2-variations-during-the-marine-isotope-stage-6-period-190-135-ka-182.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-2203-2020

International audience Abstract. Using new and previously published CO2 data from the EPICA Dome C ice core (EDC), we reconstruct a new high-resolution record of atmospheric CO2 during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 (190 to 135 ka) the penultimate glacial period. Similar to the last glacial cycle, where high-resolution data already exists, our record shows that during longer North Atlantic (NA) stadials, millennial CO2 variations during MIS 6 are clearly coincident with the bipolar seesaw signal in the Antarctic temperature record. However, during one short stadial in the NA, atmospheric CO2 variation is small (∼5 ppm) and the relationship between temperature variations in EDC and atmospheric CO2 is unclear. The magnitude of CO2 increase during Carbon Dioxide Maxima (CDM) is closely related to the NA stadial duration in both MIS 6 and MIS 3 (60–27 ka). This observation implies that during the last two glacials the overall bipolar seesaw coupling of climate and atmospheric CO2 operated similarly. In addition, similar to the last glacial period, CDM during the earliest MIS 6 show different lags with respect to the corresponding abrupt CH4 rises, the latter reflecting rapid warming in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). During MIS 6i at around 181.5±0.3 ka, CDM 6i lags the abrupt warming in the NH by only 240±320 years. However, during CDM 6iv (171.1±0.2 ka) and CDM 6iii (175.4±0.4 ka) the lag is much longer: 1290±540 years on average. We speculate that the size of this lag may be related to a larger expansion of carbon-rich, southern-sourced waters into the Northern Hemisphere in MIS 6, providing a larger carbon reservoir that requires more time to be depleted.