Persistent 400,000-year variability of antarctic ice volume and the carbon cycle is revealed throughout the plio-pleistocene

• Main Authors: De Boer, B., Lourens, Lucas J., Van De Wal, Roderik S.W.
• Other Authors: Sub Dynamics Meteorology, Stratigraphy and paleontology, Marine and Atmospheric Research, Stratigraphy & paleontology
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/305587

Marine sediment records from the Oligocene and Miocene reveal clear 400,000-year climate cycles related to variations in orbital eccentricity. These cycles are also observed in the Plio-Pleistocene records of the global carbon cycle. However, they are absent from the Late Pleistocene ice-age record over the past 1.5 million years. Here we present a simulation of global ice volume over the past 5 million years with a coupled system of four three-dimensional ice-sheet models. Our simulation shows that the 400,000-year long eccentricity cycles of Antarctica vary coherently with δ 13 C data during the Pleistocene, suggesting that they drove the long-term carbon cycle changes throughout the past 35 million years. The 400,000-year response of Antarctica was eventually suppressed by the dominant 100,000-year glacial cycles of the large ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited.