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, JA, Beck, K, Blaauw, M, Hodgson, DA, Heijnis, H, Gadd, PS, Lise-Pronovos, A
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic cold reversal; Tasmania; Carbon cycle; Southern ocean; Pollen; Charcoal; Southern hemisphere; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://eprints.utas.edu.au/47367/

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 CO2 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 Bøllinge-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.