Greenland’s ice, a memory of past climate change

Greenland ice cores contain tracers that record climate and environmental changes in different regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Using high-resolution records from these polar ice samples, scientists have been able to establish the duration and magnitude of abrupt climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere. The team has developed a statistical tool to accurately characterise their temporal evolution as well as the amplitude of associated local and regional changes. Their work shows that these climatic changes occurred over a relatively short period of time, a few decades on average, that they began synchronously in the low and high latitudes, but that they did not follow a single evolutionary pattern.

These results add to a larger database for studying the processes responsible for abrupt climate changes in the past. They highlight that even repeated climate events that appear similar can be very different when studied in detail. More needs to be known about how the different elements of the climate system interact with each other during periods of climate change. More research is needed to understand whether sea ice, ocean and atmospheric feedbacks are a general feature of the Earth’s climate or whether they are specific to the glacial climate.

Article initialy published by INSU.

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►E. Capron, S. O. Rasmussen, T. J. Popp, T. Erhardt, H. Fischer, A. Landais, J. B. Pedro, G. Vettoretti, A. Grinsted, V. Gkinis, B. Vaughn, A. Svensson, B. M. Vinther et J. W. C. White. : The anatomy of past abrupt warmings recorded in Greenland ice. – Nature Communications 12, 2106 (2021). DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22241-w

►Read the press release from the Niels Bohr Institute

Local scientific contact

Émilie Capron, IGE / OSUG