Sustained North Atlantic warming drove anomalously intense MIS 11c interglacial.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39009621.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-50207-1 and PMC identifier 11251152.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11c interglacial and its preceding glacial termination represent an enigmatically intense climate response to relatively weak insolation forcing. So far, a lack of radiometric age control has confounded a detailed assessment of the insolation-climate relationship during this period. Here, we present <sup>230</sup>Th-dated speleothem proxy data from northern Italy and compare them with palaeoclimate records from the North Atlantic region. We find that interglacial conditions started in subtropical to middle latitudes at 423.1 ± 1.3 thousand years (kyr) before present, during a first weak insolation maximum, whereas northern high latitudes remained glaciated (sea level ~ 40 m below present). Some 14.5 ± 2.8 kyr after this early subtropical onset, peak interglacial conditions were reached globally, with sea level 6-13 m above present, despite weak insolation forcing. We attribute this remarkably intense climate response to an exceptionally long (~15 kyr) episode of intense poleward heat flux transport prior to the MIS 11c optimum.