Atmospheric CO₂ concentration and millennial-scale climate change during the last glacial period.

Nature, Vol. 392, p. 59-62, 1998

B. Stauffer, T. Blunier, A. Dällenbach, A. Indermühle, J. Schwander, T.F. Stocker, J. Tschumi
Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
J. Chapellaz, D. Raynaud
Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Geophysique de l'Environnement, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique St. Martin d'Héres, France.
C.U. Hammer and H.B. Clausen
Departement of Geophysics, The Niels Bohr Institute of Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics, University of Copenhagen..

ABSTRACT.
The analysis of air bubles trapped in polar ice has permitted the reconstruction of past atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ over various timescales, and revealed that large climate changes over tens of thousands of years are generally accompanied by changes in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. But the extent to which such covariations occur for fast, millennial-scale climate shifts, such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial period, is unresolved; CO₂ data from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores have been conflicting in this regard. More recent work suggests that Antarctic ice should provide a more reliable CO₂ record, as the higher dust content of Greenland ice can give rise to artefacts. To compare the rapid climate changes recorded in the Greenland ice with the global trends in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations as recorded in the records of global atmospheric methane concentrations from both Greenland and Antarctic ice, an accurate common timescale is needed. Here we provide such a timescale for the last glacial period using the record of global atmospheric methane concentrations from both Greenland and Antarctic ice. We find that the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ generally varied little with Dansgaard-Oeschger events (<10 parts per million by volume, ppmv) but varied significantly with Heinrich iceberg-discharge events (ca. 20 ppmv), especially those starting with a long-lasting Dansgaard-Oeschger event.