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Atmospheric CO2 concentration and millennial-scale climate change during the last glacial period

Abstract

The analysis of air bubbles trapped in polar ice has permitted the reconstruction of past atmospheric concentrations of CO2 over various timescales, and revealed that large climate changes over tens of thousands of years are generally accompanied by changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations1. But the extent to which such covariations occur for fast, millennial-scale climate shifts, such as the Dansgaard–Oeschger events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial period2, is unresolved; CO2 data from Greenland3 and Antarctic4 ice cores have been conflicting in this regard. More recent work suggests that Antarctic ice should provide a more reliable CO2 record, as the higher dust5 content of Greenland ice can give rise to artefacts1,6,7. To compare the rapid climate changes recorded in the Greenland ice with the global trends in atmospheric CO2 concentrations as recorded in the Antarctic ice, an accurate common timescale is needed. Here we provide such a timescale for the last glacial period using the records of global atmospheric methane concentrations from both Greenland and Antarctic ice. We find that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 generally varied little with Dansgaard–Oeschger events (<10 parts per million by volume, p.p.m.v.) but varied significantly with Heinrich iceberg-discharge events (20 p.p.m.v.), especially those starting with a long-lasting Dansgaard–Oeschger event.

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Figure 1: Methane concentrations measured on the GRIP and Byrd ice cores.
Figure 2: Comparison of CO2 variations and climate changes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Leuenberger and J.-M. Barnola for discussions, and F. Finet for measuring additional CH4 samples at LGGE. This work, as part of the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP), was supported by the University of Bern, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Federal Department of Energy (BEW), the Schwerpunktprogramm Umwelt (SPPU) of the Swiss National Science Foundation, the EC programme “Environment and Climate 1994–1998”, the Fondation de France and the Programme National de Dynamique du Climat of CNRS.

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Correspondence to B. Stauffer.

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Stauffer, B., Blunier, T., Dällenbach, A. et al. Atmospheric CO2 concentration and millennial-scale climate change during the last glacial period. Nature 392, 59–62 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/32133

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