Dating the Vostok ice core by an inverse method

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
• Main Authors: Parrenin, Frédéric, Jouzel, Jean, Waelbroeck, Claire, Ritz, Catherine, Barnola, Jean-Marc
• Other Authors: Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP )-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes 2016-2019 (UGA 2016-2019 ), Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement (LGGE), Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Grenoble (OSUG), Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP )-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB Université de Savoie Université de Chambéry )-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP )-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB Université de Savoie Université de Chambéry )-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 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), Glaces et Continents, Climats et Isotopes Stables (GLACCIOS), 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)-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), Paléocéanographie (PALEOCEAN)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2001
• Subjects: [SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean; Atmosphere; [SDU.ENVI]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Continental interfaces; environment; Greenland; Greenland ice cores; GRIP; ice core
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-02916204; https://hal.science/hal-02916204/document; https://hal.science/hal-02916204/file/2001JD900245.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JD900245

International audience Using the chronological information available in the Vostok records, we apply an inverse method to assess the quality of the Vostok glaciological timescale. The inversion procedure provides not only an optimized glaciological timescale and its confidence interval but also a reliable estimate of the duration of successive events. Our results highlight a disagreement between orbitally tuned and glaciological timescales below ∼2700 m (i.e., ∼250 kyr B.P., thousands of years before present). This disagreement could be caused by some discontinuity in the spatial variation of accumulation upstream of Vostok. Moreover, the stratigraphic datings of central Greenland ice cores (GRIP and GISP2) appear older than our optimized timescale for the late glacial. This underlines an unconsistency between the physical assumptions used to construct the Vostok glaciological timescale and the stratigraphic datings. The inverse method allows the first assessment of the evolution of the phase between Vostok climatic records and insolation. This phase significantly varies with time which gives a measure of the nonlinear character of the climatic system and suggests that the climatic response to orbital forcing is of different nature for glacial and interglacial periods. We confirm that the last interglacial, as recorded in the Vostok deuterium record, was long (16.2±2 kyr, thousands of years). However, midtransition of termination II occurred at 133.4±2.5 kyr BP, which does not support the recent claim for an earlier deglaciation. Finally, our study suggests that temperature changes are correctly estimated when using the spatial present‐day deuterium‐temperature relationship to interpret the Vostok deuterium record.