Characterising the expression of sub-millennial scale climate events in western Europe during the early last glacial period using multi-proxy speleothem records

Past abrupt climate changes act as critical analogues for understanding how the climate system may respond to future abrupt changes. One of the best examples of naturally occurring abrupt climate change is the series of millennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events that took place during the last glacial period (115,000 – 11,500 years ago). D-O events are clearly recorded in ice-cores from Greenland, with coincident climate changes detected in marine and terrestrial records spanning a range of climate zones. Greenland ice cores also record shorter-lived ‘sub-millennial’ scale events that occur within the main D-O event sequence, particularly during the early last glacial period. To what extent these sub-millennial events were expressed outside of Greenland is currently poorly understood. Here we characterise the response to sub-millennial scale climate changes in western Europe using five multi-proxy (δ18O, δ13C, Mg and Sr) speleothem records from Saint-Marcel and Orgnac Caves, France, that collectively span 127 – 87 kyr BP. The replicated speleothem records clearly preserve both millennial D-O events and sub-millennial events, demonstrating the strong coupling between the climate of south-east France and the North Atlantic across both millennial and sub-millennial timescales. Interestingly, the multiproxy record reveals a decoupling between broad temperature (indicated by δ13C) and precipitation changes (indicated by δ18O) during some of these sub-millennial scale events. This suggests that climate teleconnections operating during sub-millennial events were in some ways different to those during the stronger millennial-scale D-O events.

Keywords

Glaciers, Records management, Caves, Climatic change, Drill cores, Greenland, France

Citation

Corrick, E., Drysdale, R., Hellstrom, J., Couchoud, I., Wong, H., Didier, C., Hai, C., Jaillet, S., & Tocino, S. (2022). Characterising the expression of sub-millennial scale climate events in western Europe during the early last glacial period using multi-proxy speleothem records. Paper presented to AQUA 2022 Conference, 6-8 December 2022, Adelaide. (pp. 36-37). Retrieved from: http://aqua.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AQUA-2022-conference-program-and-abstract-booklet.pdf

URI

https://apo.ansto.gov.au/handle/10238/15452

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