Persistent 400,000-year variability of antarctic ice volume and the carbon cycle is revealed throughout the plio-pleistocene
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...
| Published in: | Nature Communications |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/d608aff9-89b5-4022-9244-90242be1aa1c https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3999 https://hdl.handle.net/1871.1/d608aff9-89b5-4022-9244-90242be1aa1c http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84891761295&partnerID=8YFLogxK http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84891761295&partnerID=8YFLogxK |
| Summary: | 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. |
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