Interglacial instability of North Atlantic Deep Water ventilation

DOI

Disrupting North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) ventilation is a key concern in climate projections. We use (sub)centennially resolved bottom water d13C records that span the interglacials of the last 0.5 million years to assess the frequency of and the climatic backgrounds capable of triggering large NADW reductions. Episodes of reduced NADW in the deep Atlantic, similar in magnitude to glacial events, have been relatively common and occasionally long-lasting features of interglacials. NADW reductions were triggered across the range of recent interglacial climate backgrounds, which demonstrates that catastrophic freshwater outburst floods were not a prerequisite for large perturbations. Our results argue that large NADW disruptions are more easily achieved than previously appreciated and that they occurred in past climate conditions similar to those we may soon face.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.17882/77657
Metadata Access http://www.seanoe.org/oai/OAIHandler?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:seanoe.org:77657
Provenance
Creator Galaasen, Eirik Vinje; Ninnemann, Ulysses; Kessler, Augustin; Irvali, Nil; Rosenthal, Yair; Tjiputra, Jerry; Bouttes, Nathaëlle; Roche, Didier M.; Kleiven, Helga (kikki) F.; Hodell, David A.
Publisher SEANOE
Publication Year 2020
Rights CC-BY
OpenAccess true
Contact SEANOE
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Marine Science