The role of orbital forcing, carbon dioxide and regolith in 100 kyr glacial cycles

The origin of the 100 kyr cyclicity, which dominates ice volume variations and other climate records over the past million years, remains debatable. Here, using a comprehensive Earth system model of intermediate complexity, we demonstrate that both strong 100 kyr periodicity in the ice volume variations and the timing of glacial terminations during past 800 kyr can be successfully simulated as direct, strongly nonlinear responses of the climate-cryosphere system to orbital forcing alone, if the atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentration stays below its typical interglacial value. The existence of long glacial cycles is primarily attributed to the North American ice sheet and requires the presence of a large continental area with exposed rocks. We show that the sharp, 100 kyr peak in the power spectrum of ice volume results from the long glacial cycles being synchronized with the Earth's orbital eccentricity. Although 100 kyr cyclicity can be simulated with a constant CO<sub>2</sub> concentration, temporal variability in the CO<sub>2</sub> concentration plays an important role in the amplification of the 100 kyr cycles

Mid-Pleistocene transition in glacial cycles explained by declining CO2 and regolith removal

Variations in Earth's orbit pace the glacial-interglacial cycles of the Quaternary, but the mechanisms that transform regional and seasonal variations in solar insolation into glacial-interglacial cycles are still elusive. Here, we present transient simulations of coevolution of climate, ice sheets, and carbon cycle over the past 3 million years. We show that a gradual lowering of atmospheric CO2 and regolith removal are essential to reproduce the evolution of climate variability over the Quaternary. The long-term CO2 decrease leads to the initiation of Northern Hemisphere glaciation and an increase in the amplitude of glacial-interglacial variations, while the combined effect of CO2 decline and regolith removal controls the timing of the transition from a 41,000- to 100,000-year world. Our results suggest that the current CO2 concentration is unprecedented over the past 3 million years and that global temperature never exceeded the preindustrial value by more than 2°C during the Quaternary

Mid-Pleistocene transition in glacial cycles explained by declining CO2and regolith removal

Variations in Earth’s orbit pace the glacial-interglacial cycles of the Quaternary, but the mechanisms that transform regional and seasonal variations in solar insolation into glacial-interglacial cycles are still elusive. Here, we present transient simulations of coevolution of climate, ice sheets, and carbon cycle over the past 3 million years. We show that a gradual lowering of atmospheric CO2 and regolith removal are essential to reproduce the evolution of climate variability over the Quaternary. The long-term CO2 decrease leads to the initiation of Northern Hemisphere glaciation and an increase in the amplitude of glacial-interglacial variations, while the combined effect of CO2 decline and regolith removal controls the timing of the transition from a 41,000- to 100,000-year world. Our results suggest that the current CO2 concentration is unprecedented over the past 3 million years and that global temperature never exceeded the preindustrial value by more than 2°C during the Quaternary

On the Cause of the Mid‐Pleistocene Transition

The Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), where the Pleistocene glacial cycles changed from 41 to ∼100 kyr periodicity, is one of the most intriguing unsolved issues in the field of paleoclimatology. Over the course of over four decades of research, several different physical mechanisms have been proposed to explain the MPT, involving non-linear feedbacks between ice sheets and the global climate, the solid Earth, ocean circulation, and the carbon cycle. Here, we review these different mechanisms, comparing how each of them relates to the others, and to the currently available observational evidence. Based on this discussion, we identify the most important gaps in our current understanding of the MPT. We discuss how new model experiments, which focus on the quantitative differences between the different physical mechanisms, could help fill these gaps. The results of those experiments could help interpret available proxy evidence, as well as new evidence that is expected to become available

Interglacials of the Quaternary defined by northern hemispheric land ice distribution outside of Greenland

Glacial/interglacial dynamics during the Quaternary were suggested to be mainly driven by obliquity (41-kyr periodicity), including irregularities during the last 1 Myr that resulted in on average 100-kyr cycles. Here, we investigate this so-called Mid-Pleistocene Transition via model-based deconvolution of benthic δ18O, redefining interglacials by lack of substantial northern hemispheric land ice outside of Greenland. We find that in 67%, 88% and 52% of the obliquity cycles during the early, middle and late Quaternary, respectively, a glacial termination is realized leading to irregular appearances of new interglacials during various parts of the last 2.6 Myr. This finding suggests that the proposed idea of terminations leading to new interglacials in the Quaternary as obliquity driven with growing influence of land ice volume on the timing of deglaciations during the last 1 Myr might be too simple. Alternatively, the land ice-based definition of interglacials needs revision if applied to the entire Quaternary

The Mid-Pleistocene Transition induced by delayed feedback and bistability

The Mid-Pleistocene Transition, the shift from 41 kyr to 100 kyr glacial-interglacial cycles that occurred roughly 1 Myr ago, is often considered as a change in internal climate dynamics. Here we revisit the model of Quaternary climate dynamics that was proposed by Saltzman and Maasch (1988). We show that it is quantitatively similar to a scalar equation for the ice dynamics only when combining the remaining components into a single delayed feedback term. The delay is the sum of the internal times scales of ocean transport and ice sheet dynamics, which is on the order of 10 kyr. We find that, in the absence of astronomical forcing, the delayed feedback leads to bistable behaviour, where stable large-amplitude oscillations of ice volume and an equilibrium coexist over a large range of values for the delay. We then apply astronomical forcing. We perform a systematic study to show how the system response depends on the forcing amplitude. We find that over a wide range of forcing amplitudes the forcing leads to a switch from small-scale oscillations of 41 kyr to large-amplitude oscillations of roughly 100 kyr without any change of other parameters. The transition in the forced model consistently occurs near the time of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition as observed in data records. This provides evidence that the MPT could have been primarily a forcing-induced switch between attractors of the internal dynamics. Small additional random disturbances make the forcing-induced transition near 800 kyr BP even more robust. We also find that the forced system forgets its initial history during the small-scale oscillations, in particular, nearby initial conditions converge prior to transitioning. In contrast to this, in the regime of large-amplitude oscillations, the oscillation phase is very sensitive to random perturbations, which has a strong effect on the timing of the deglaciation events

From Greenhouse to Icehouse: Understanding Earth's Climate Extremes Through Models and Proxies.

On geologic time scales, Earth has fluctuated between greenhouse and icehouse climates. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for these disparate climate states provides valuable insight into long-term climate forecasts. During the Quaternary (2.6-0 Ma), there were a series of large glaciations. The pacing of these glacial cycles is often attributed to orbitally controlled high-latitude summer insolation, because it influences the amount of ice melt. However, this relationship is not well reflected in ice-volume records. For instance, in the early Pleistocene (2.6-0.8 Ma), glacial cycles oscillated mainly with obliquity while summer insolation varied most strongly with precession. Here, Earth system model simulations show that a combination of albedo feedbacks, seasonal offset of precession forcing, and orbital cycle duration differences amplified the ice-volume response to obliquity relative to precession; these results help explain the paradox of the early Pleistocene glacial cycles. Another enigma of Quaternary is the transition from 41 to 100 kyr glacial cycles with ~50 m greater sea level variability, which arose despite little change in CO2 or orbital forcing. The regolith hypothesis provides a potential explanation for this transition. It posits that glacial cycles gradually eroded pre-existing high-latitude regolith, causing a change in ice sheet response to orbital forcing as the ice bed transitioned from low-friction sediment to high-friction bedrock. Earth system model results provide support for the regolith hypothesis; only with reduced basal sliding does the 100 kyr ice-volume signal of the late Pleistocene (0.8-0 Ma) appear in the simulated ice-volume cycles. In contrast to the Quaternary, the Cretaceous (145-66 Ma) was a greenhouse climate. Nevertheless, evidence suggests significant climate changes occurred during this period, including a dramatic cooling from the Cenomanian (100-94 Ma) to Maastrichtian (72-66 Ma). Here, two Earth system models and a compilation of proxy records are used to explore the hypotheses that Late Cretaceous (100-66 Ma) cooling was in response to changes in geography or CO2. Results show that a decrease in CO2 is necessary to explain the proxy identified cooling across the Late Cretaceous. However, tectonic evolution caused substantial regional climate changes that must be considered when interpreting proxy records.PHDGeologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120749/1/crtabor_1.pd

Bifurcations and strange nonchaotic attractors in a phase oscillator model of glacial-interglacial cycles

Glacial-interglacial cycles are large variations in continental ice mass and greenhouse gases, which have dominated climate variability over the Quaternary. The dominant periodicity of the cycles is $\sim$40 kyr before the so-called middle Pleistocene transition between $\sim$1.2 and $\sim$0.7 Myr ago, and it is $\sim$100 kyr after the transition. In this paper, the dynamics of glacial-interglacial cycles are investigated using a phase oscillator model forced by the time-varying incoming solar radiation (insolation). We analyze the bifurcations of the system and show that strange nonchaotic attractors appear through nonsmooth saddle-node bifurcations of tori. The bifurcation analysis indicates that mode-locking is likely to occur for the 41 kyr glacial cycles but not likely for the 100 kyr glacial cycles. The sequence of mode-locked 41 kyr cycles is robust to small parameter changes. However, the sequence of 100 kyr glacial cycles can be sensitive to parameter changes when the system has a strange nonchaotic attractor.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figure