Extensive wet episodes in Late Glacial Australia resulting from high-latitude forcings
Date
2017-03-08
Authors
Bayon, Germain
De Deckker, Patrick
Magee, John W.
Germain, Yoan
Bermell, Sylvain
Tachikawa, Kazuyo
Norman, Marc D.
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Nature Publishing Group
Abstract
Millennial-scale cooling events termed Heinrich Stadials punctuated Northern Hemisphere climate
during the last glacial period. Latitudinal shifts of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) are
thought to have rapidly propagated these abrupt climatic signals southward, influencing the evolution
of Southern Hemisphere climates and contributing to major reorganisation of the global ocean atmosphere
system. Here, we use neodymium isotopes from a marine sediment core to reconstruct
the hydroclimatic evolution of subtropical Australia between 90 to 20 thousand years ago. We find a
strong correlation between our sediment provenance proxy data and records for western Pacific tropical
precipitations and Australian palaeolakes, which indicates that Northern Hemisphere cooling phases
were accompanied by pronounced excursions of the ITCZ and associated rainfall as far south as about
32°S. Comparatively, however, each of these humid periods lasted substantially longer than the mean
duration of Heinrich Stadials, overlapping with subsequent warming phases of the southern high latitudes
recorded in Antarctic ice cores. In addition to ITCZ-driven hydroclimate forcing, we infer that
changes in Southern Ocean climate also played an important role in regulating late glacial atmospheric
patterns of the Southern Hemisphere subtropical regions.
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Keywords
millennial-scale, cooling, Heinrich Stadials, Northern Hemisphere, climate, global, ocean, atmosphere, latitudinal shifts, intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ)
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Source
Scientific Reports
Type
Journal article
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Open Access
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