Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes

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The U.S. Climate Science Program Chapter 3
high-latitude warmth thus is likely to have originated
primarily from changes in greenhousegas
concentrations in the atmosphere, or from
changes in oceanic or atmospheric circulation,
or from some combination, perhaps with a slight
possibility that other processes also contributed.
3.4.2 The Early Quaternary: Ice-Age
Warm Times
A major reorganization of the climate system
occurred between 3.0 and 2.5 Ma. As a result,
the first continental ice sheets developed in
the North American and eurASiAn Arctic and
marked the onset of the Quaternary Ice Ages
(Raymo, 1994). For the first 1.5–2.0 Ma, ice age
cycles appeared at a 41-k.y. interval, and the climate
oscillated between glacial and interglacial
states (Figure 3.25). A prominent but apparently
short-lived interglacial (warm interval) about
2.4 Ma is recorded especially well in the kAp
københAvn Formation, a 100-m-thick sequence
of estuarine sediments that covered an extensive
lowland area near the northern tip of GreenlAnd
(Funder et al., 2001).
The rich and well-preserved fossil fauna and
flora in the kAp københAvn Formation (Figure
3.26) record warming from cold conditions
into an interglacial and then subsequent cooling
BENTHIC δ 18 O (ä)
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
Large N land ice;
100 ka variations
Intermediate N land ice;
41 ka variations
during 10,000–20,000 years. During the peak
warmth, forest trees reached the Arctic oceAn
coast, 1,000 kilometers (km) north of the northernmost
trees today. Based on this warmth,
Funder et al. (2001) suggested that the GreenlAnd
ice Sheet must have been reduced to local
ice caps in mountain areas (Figure 3.26A) (see
Chapter 5, History of the Greenland Ice Sheet).
Although finely resolved time records are not
available throughout the Arctic oceAn at that
time, by analogy with present faunas along the
Russian coast, the coastal zone would have been
ice-free for 2 to 3 months in summer. Today
this coast of GreenlAnd experiences year-round
sea ice, and models of diminishing sea ice in a
warming world generally indicate long-term
persistence of summertime sea ice off these
shores (e.g., Holland et al., 2006). Thus, the
reduced sea ice off northern GreenlAnd during
deposition of the kAp københAvn Formation suggests
a widespread warm time in which Arctic
sea ice was much diminished.
During kAp københAvn times, precipitation was
higher and temperatures were warmer than at
the peak of the current interglacial about 7 ka,
and the temperature difference was larger during
winter than during summer. Higher temperatures
during deposition of the kAp københAvn
were not caused by notably greater solar
insolation, owing to the relative repeatability
Restricted N land ice
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0
TODAY
TIME (MA)
WARM
COLD
Figure 3.25. The average isotope composition (δ 18O) of bottom-dwelling foraminifers in a globally
distributed set of 57 sediment cores that record the last 5.3 m.y. (modified from Lisiecki and Raymo,
2005). The δ 18O is controlled primarily by global ice volume and deep-ocean temperature, with less ice
or warmer temperatures (or both) upward in the core. The influence of Milankovitch frequencies of
Earth’s orbital variation are present throughout, but glaciation increased about 2.7 Ma concurrently with
establishment of a strong 41-k.y. variability linked to Earth’s obliquity (changes in tilt of Earth’s spin axis),
and the additional increase in glaciation about 1.2–0.7 Ma parallels a shift to stronger 100-k.y. variability.
Dashed lines are used because the changes seem to have been gradual. The general trend toward higher
δ 18O that runs through this series reflects the long-term drift toward a colder Earth that began in the
early Cenozoic (see Figure 2.8). http://lorraine-lisiecki.com/stack.html.