A new 27 ky high resolution East Antarctic climate record

Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 28, No. 16, p. 3199-3202, 2001 

J. Jouzel, V. Masson, O. Cattani, S. Falourd, M. Stievenard
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Bat. 709, L'Orme des Merisiers, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
B. Stenni
Department of Geological, Environmental and Marine Sciences, University of Trieste Trieste, Italy.
A. Longinelli
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
S.J. Johnsen, J.P. Steffensen
Departement of Geophysics, The Niels Bohr Institute of Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics, University of Copenhagen.
J.R. Petit
Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement, CNRS, St. Martin d'Hères, France.
J. Schwander
Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
R. Souchez
Département des Sciences de la Terre et de l'Environnement, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgique.
N.I. Barkov
Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia.

ABSTRACT.
The ice core recently drilled at the Dome Concordia site on the East Antarctic plateau provides a new high resolution isotope record covering part of the last glacial, the last transition and the Holocene. The two step shape of the deglaciation is remarkably similar for all the ice cores now available on the East Antarctic plateau. The first warming trend ends about 14000 years ago and is followed by the well marked Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR) with a secondary peak common to all records. During the deglaciation, there are mpre similarities between the near coastal site of Taylor Dome and inland East Antarctica than between Taylor Dome and central Greenland. However, the results for EPICA do appear to confirm the Taylor Dome timescale after about 14 ka, showing cooling into the ACR roughly in phase between Greenland and Antarctica. While the overall deglacial pattern is asynchronous, this suggests that the now classical picture of a temperature seesaw between Antarctica and Greenland may be too simplistic.