Publication Date:
2009-08-15
Description:
Variations in the intensity of high-latitude Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, driven largely by precession of the equinoxes, are widely thought to control the timing of Late Pleistocene glacial terminations. However, recently it has been suggested that changes in Earth's obliquity may be a more important mechanism. We present a new speleothem-based North Atlantic marine chronology that shows that the penultimate glacial termination (Termination II) commenced 141,000 +/- 2500 years before the present, too early to be explained by Northern Hemisphere summer insolation but consistent with changes in Earth's obliquity. Our record reveals that Terminations I and II are separated by three obliquity cycles and that they started at near-identical obliquity phases.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Drysdale, R N -- Hellstrom, J C -- Zanchetta, G -- Fallick, A E -- Sanchez Goni, M F -- Couchoud, I -- McDonald, J -- Maas, R -- Lohmann, G -- Isola, I -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Sep 18;325(5947):1527-31. doi: 10.1126/science.1170371. Epub 2009 Aug 13.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Environmental and Climate Change Group, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales 2308, Australia. russell.drysdale@newcastle.edu.au〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19679773" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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