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Was millennial scale climate change during the Last Glacial triggered by explosive volcanism?

Baldini, J.U.L. and Brown, R.J. and McElwaine, J.N. (2015) 'Was millennial scale climate change during the Last Glacial triggered by explosive volcanism?', Scientific reports., 5 . p. 17442.

Abstract

The mechanisms responsible for millennial scale climate change within glacial time intervals are equivocal. Here we show that all eight known radiometrically-dated Tambora-sized or larger NH eruptions over the interval 30 to 80 ka BP are associated with abrupt Greenland cooling (>95% confidence). Additionally, previous research reported a strong statistical correlation between the timing of Southern Hemisphere volcanism and Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events (>99% confidence), but did not identify a causative mechanism. Volcanic aerosol-induced asymmetrical hemispheric cooling over the last few hundred years restructured atmospheric circulation in a similar fashion as that associated with Last Glacial millennial-scale shifts (albeit on a smaller scale). We hypothesise that following both recent and Last Glacial NH eruptions, volcanogenic sulphate injections into the stratosphere cooled the NH preferentially, inducing a hemispheric temperature asymmetry that shifted atmospheric circulation cells southward. This resulted in Greenland cooling, Antarctic warming, and a southward shifted ITCZ. However, during the Last Glacial, the initial eruption-induced climate response was prolonged by NH glacier and sea ice expansion, increased NH albedo, AMOC weakening, more NH cooling, and a consequent positive feedback. Conversely, preferential SH cooling following large SH eruptions shifted atmospheric circulation to the north, resulting in the characteristic features of DO events.

Item Type:Article
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Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution.
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Status:Peer-reviewed
Publisher Web site:https://doi.org/10.1038/srep17442
Publisher statement:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Date accepted:29 October 2015
Date deposited:20 October 2016
Date of first online publication:30 November 2015
Date first made open access:No date available

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