Abrupt high-latitude climate events and decoupled seasonal trends during the Eemian

The Eemian (the Last Interglacial; ca. 129–116 thousand years ago) presents a testbed for assessing environmental responses and climate feedbacks under warmer-than-present boundary conditions. However, climate syntheses for the Eemian remain hampered by lack of data from the high-latitude land areas...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2018-07, Vol.9 (1), p.2851-10, Article 2851
Main Authors: Salonen, J. Sakari, Helmens, Karin F., Brendryen, Jo, Kuosmanen, Niina, Väliranta, Minna, Goring, Simon, Korpela, Mikko, Kylander, Malin, Philip, Annemarie, Plikk, Anna, Renssen, Hans, Luoto, Miska
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/413
704/106/694
704/158/2462
Air temperature
Boundary conditions
Drying
Environmental assessment
Environmental testing
Humanities and Social Sciences
Latitude
Masking
multidisciplinary
Polar environments
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Trends
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Eemian (the Last Interglacial; ca. 129–116 thousand years ago) presents a testbed for assessing environmental responses and climate feedbacks under warmer-than-present boundary conditions. However, climate syntheses for the Eemian remain hampered by lack of data from the high-latitude land areas, masking the climate response and feedbacks in the Arctic. Here we present a high-resolution (sub-centennial) record of Eemian palaeoclimate from northern Finland, with multi-model reconstructions for July and January air temperature. In contrast with the mid-latitudes of Europe, our data show decoupled seasonal trends with falling July and rising January temperatures over the Eemian, due to orbital and oceanic forcings. This leads to an oceanic Late-Eemian climate, consistent with an earlier hypothesis of glacial inception in Europe. The interglacial is further intersected by two strong cooling and drying events. These abrupt events parallel shifts in marine proxy data, linked to disturbances in the North Atlantic oceanic circulation regime. The Eemian period (120 ka) is considered a past analogue for future climatic warming, yet data from the high latitudes remains sparse. Here, the authors show that in Northern Europe, the Eemian saw dramatic climatic shifts, linked to changes in Earth’s orbit and North Atlantic oceanic circulation.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-05314-1