Irregular tropical glacier retreat over the Holocene epoch driven by progressive warming

The causes and timing of tropical glacier fluctuations during the Holocene epoch (10,000 years ago to present) are poorly understood. Yet constraining their sensitivity to changes in climate is important, as these glaciers are both sensitive indicators of climate change and serve as water reservoirs for highland regions. Studies have so far documented extra-tropical glacier fluctuations, but in the tropics, glacier-climate relationships are insufficiently understood. Here we present a (10)Be chronology for the past 11,000?years (11?kyr), using 57 moraines from the Bolivian Telata glacier (in the Cordillera Real mountain range). This chronology indicates that Telata glacier retreated irregularly. A rapid and strong melting from the maximum extent occurred from 10.8?±?0.9 to 8.5?±?0.4?kyr ago, followed by a slower retreat until the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. A dramatic increase in the rate of retreat occurred over the twentieth century. A glacier-climate model indicates that, relative to modern climate, annual mean temperature for the Telata glacier region was -3.3?±?0.8 °C cooler at 11?kyr ago and remained -2.1?±?0.8 °C cooler until the end of the Little Ice Age. We suggest that long-term warming of the eastern tropical Pacific and increased atmospheric temperature in response to enhanced austral summer insolation were the main drivers for the long-term Holocene retreat of glaciers in the southern tropics.     

Stability of the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula during the Holocene epoch

The stability of the Antarctic ice shelves in a warming climate has long been discussed, and the recent collapse of a significant part, over 12,500 km2 in area, of the Larsen ice shelf off the Antarctic Peninsula has led to a refocus toward the implications of ice shelf decay for the stability of Antarctica's grounded ice. Some smaller Antarctic ice shelves have undergone periodic growth and decay over the past 11,000 yr (refs 7-11), but these ice shelves are at the climatic limit of ice shelf viability and are therefore expected to respond rapidly to natural climate variability at century to millennial scales. Here we use records of diatoms, detrital material and geochemical parameters from six marine sediment cores in the vicinity of the Larsen ice shelf to demonstrate that the recent collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf is unprecedented during the Holocene. We infer from our oxygen isotope measurements in planktonic foraminifera that the Larsen B ice shelf has been thinning throughout the Holocene, and we suggest that the recent prolonged period of warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region, in combination with the long-term thinning, has led to collapse of the ice shelf.     

Thinning of the ice sheet in northwest Greenland over the past forty years.

Thermal expansion of the oceans, as well as melting of glaciers, ice sheets and ice caps have been the main contributors to global sea level rise over the past century. The greatest uncertainty in predicting future sea level changes lies with our estimates of the mass balance of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Satellite measurements have been used to determine changes in these ice sheets on short timescales, demonstrating that surface-elevation changes on timescales of decades or less result mainly from variations in snow accumulation. Here we present direct measurements of the changes in surface elevation between 1954 and 1995 on a traverse across the north Greenland ice sheet. Measurements over a time interval of this length should reflect changes in ice flow-the important quantity for predicting changes in sea level-relatively unperturbed by short-term fluctuations in snow accumulation. We find only small changes in the eastern part of the transect, except for some thickening of the north ice stream. On the west side, however, the thinning rates of the ice sheet are significantly higher and thinning extends to higher elevations than had been anticipated from previous studies.     

Continental ice in Greenland during the Eocene and Oligocene

The Eocene and Oligocene epochs (approximately 55 to 23 million years ago) comprise a critical phase in Earth history. An array of geological records supported by climate modelling indicates a profound shift in global climate during this interval, from a state that was largely free of polar ice caps to one in which ice sheets on Antarctica approached their modern size. However, the early glaciation history of the Northern Hemisphere is a subject of controversy. Here we report stratigraphically extensive ice-rafted debris, including macroscopic dropstones, in late Eocene to early Oligocene sediments from the Norwegian-Greenland Sea that were deposited between about 38 and 30 million years ago. Our data indicate sediment rafting by glacial ice, rather than sea ice, and point to East Greenland as the likely source. Records of this type from one site alone cannot be used to determine the extent of ice involved. However, our data suggest the existence of (at least) isolated glaciers on Greenland about 20 million years earlier than previously documented, at a time when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were substantially higher.     

Millennial-scale storminess variability in the northeastern United States during the Holocene epoch

For the purpose of detecting the effects of human activities on climate change, it is important to document natural change in past climate. In this context, it has proved particularly difficult to study the variability in the occurrence of extreme climate events, such as storms with exceptional rainfall. Previous investigations have established storm chronologies using sediment cores from single lakes, but such studies can be susceptible to local environmental bias. Here we date terrigenous inwash layers in cores from 13 lakes, which show that the frequency of storm-related floods in the northeastern United States has varied in regular cycles during the past 13,000 years (13 kyr), with a characteristic period of about 3 kyr. Our data show four peaks in storminess during the past 14 kyr, approximately 2.6, 5.8, 9.1 and 11.9 kyr ago. This pattern is consistent with long-term changes in the average sign of the Arctic Oscillation, suggesting that modulation of this dominant atmospheric mode may account for a significant fraction of Holocene climate variability in North America and Europe.     

The climatic variations and development of yellow soil in Beibei since the Holocene epoch

ＴｈｅｃｌｉｍａｔｉｃｖａｒｉａｔｉｏｎｓａｎｄｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｍｅｎｔｏｆｙｅｌｌｏｗｓｏｉｌｉｎＢｅｉｂｅｉｓｉｎｃｅｔｈｅＨｏｌｏｃｅｎｅｅｐｏｃｈＦｕＷａｌｉ，ＬｕＤｅｒｅｎ，ＬｉｕＺｏｎｇｑｕｎ，ＸｕＭａｏｑｉ（ＤｅｐａｒｔｍｅｎｔｏｆＧｅｏ...     

Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch

In the present-day climate, surface water salinities are low in the western tropical Pacific Ocean and increase towards the eastern part of the basin. The salinity of surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean is thought to be controlled by a combination of atmospheric convection, precipitation, evaporation and ocean dynamics, and on interannual timescales significant variability is associated with the El Ni?o/Southern Oscillation cycles. However, little is known about the variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on timescales of centuries to millennia. Here we combine oxygen isotope and Mg/Ca data from foraminifers retrieved from three sediment cores in the western tropical Pacific Ocean to reconstruct Holocene sea surface temperatures and salinities in the region. We find a decrease in sea surface temperatures of approximately 0.5 degrees C over the past 10,000 yr, whereas sea surface salinities decreased by approximately 1.5 practical salinity units. Our data imply either that the Pacific basin as a whole has become progressively less salty or that the present salinity gradient along the Equator has developed relatively recently.     

基于年代数据的青藏高原东北部全新世风沙活动研究

本文对青藏高原东北部全新世风成沉积剖面的年代数据应用概率密度方法结合年代数据分布情况重建了该区全新世风沙活动历史.结果表明:青藏高原东北部早全新世风沙活动强烈,但也存在不同尺度的空间差异,表现在共和盆地、柴达木盆地及青海湖盆地风成砂都广泛发育,但青海湖盆地同期还有古土壤发育,冬给措纳湖流域在这一时期也有少量的风成砂层出现;中全新世古土壤广泛发育,风沙活动较弱,整个东北部具有较好的一致性;晚全新世以来,柴达木盆地和冬给措纳湖流域风成砂发育较好,而共和盆地古土壤广泛发育,同时青海湖盆地风成砂和古土壤均有出现,说明风沙活动强度的区域差异较大,这可能是由于局部地区受到了人为活动强烈干扰的影响.风沙活动强度与区域有效湿度密切相关,区域有效湿度较高时,风沙活动较弱;反之,风沙活动较强.另外,大面积湖泊的存在使得青海湖盆地和冬给措纳湖流域全新世风沙活动的特点与柴达木盆地和共和盆地不尽相同,湖泊水位与湖泊增湿降温效应的相互关系以及物源供给特点可能是造成这一现象的原因.年代数据的概率密度方法相对于频率统计直方图具有一定的优势,充分利用了单个年代数据符合正态分布的特点,能够反映年代数据的范围和精度.     

Holocene vegetation cover in Qin’an area of western Chinese Loess Plateau revealed by n-alkane

Previous studies have found that wetlands prevailed in western Chinese Loess Plateau and pine pollen could reach up to 80% in Qin＇an area of the plateau during middle Holocene. It was then deduced that forest vegetation covered Qin＇an area in a warm and wet climate during middle Holocene. The proxies of molecule biomarkers from two Holocene sections, a swamp-alluvial loess section and a typical Ioess-paleosol section are used to reconstruct regional vegetation history. It is found that the heavy-molecular-weight （HMW） homologues of the n-alkanes in all samples exhibit a pronounced odd-over-even predominance, maximizing at C31 and the abundance of the nC27-alkanes is the lowest in nC27, nC29, nC31, i.e. C27〈C29〈C31, a typical grass n-alkanes model. The results are the same as those of model surface soil samples under grass cover but different from both forest cover and modern pine leaves, which yield preferentially nC29-alkanes peak. It could be inferred that the area was dominated by grass cover but not forest cover during whole Holocene epoch. The study shows that combining both molecule biomarkers and pollen analysis can avoid the disadvantage of pollen analysis in reconstruction of regional vegetation cover.     

The nature of the solar activity during the Maunder Minimum revealed by the Guliya ice core record

Whether the solar activity was very low, and especially whether the solar cycle existed, during the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715 AD), have been disputed for a long time. In this paper we use the Guliya NO₃ ⁻ data, which can reflect the solar activity, to analyze the characteristics of the solar activity during the Maunder Minimum. The results show that the solar activity was indeed low, and solar cycle displayed normal as present, i.e. about 11a, in that period. Moreover, it was found that the solar activity contains a 36-year periodic component probably, which might be related to the variations in the length of the sunspot cycle. This finding is of importance for the study of the relationship between the sun variability and the Earth climate change.     

Reconstructed changes in Arctic sea ice over the past 1,450 years

Arctic sea ice extent is now more than two million square kilometres less than it was in the late twentieth century, with important consequences for the climate, the ocean and traditional lifestyles in the Arctic. Although observations show a more or less continuous decline for the past four or five decades, there are few long-term records with which to assess natural sea ice variability. Until now, the question of whether or not current trends are potentially anomalous has therefore remained unanswerable. Here we use a network of high-resolution terrestrial proxies from the circum-Arctic region to reconstruct past extents of summer sea ice, and show that-although extensive uncertainties remain, especially before the sixteenth century-both the duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years. Enhanced advection of warm Atlantic water to the Arctic seems to be the main factor driving the decline of sea ice extent on multidecadal timescales, and may result from nonlinear feedbacks between sea ice and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. These results reinforce the assertion that sea ice is an active component of Arctic climate variability and that the recent decrease in summer Arctic sea ice is consistent with anthropogenically forced warming.     

Evidence for cold events in the early Holocene from the Guliya ice core, Tibetan Plateau, China

Evidence for the “8.2 ka cold event” has been provided mostly from the circum-North Atlantic area. However, whether this cold event occurred in other places is a key to understanding its cause. Here, we provide the evidence for the “8.2 ka cold event” from the Guliya ice core in the northwest Tibetan Plateau, and it was found that the peak cooling (~8.3—8.2 ka) in this ice core was about 7.8—10℃, which was larger than the cooling in the North Atlantic region. The primary causes for this episode were diminished solar activity and weakened thermohaline circulation. Moreover, another weak cold event, centered about 9.4 ka, was also recorded in the Guliya ice core record. These two cold events were concurrent with the ice-rafting episodes in the North Atlantic during the early Holocene, which implies that the millennial-scale climatic cyclicity might exist in the Tibetan Plateau as well as in the North Atlantic.     

Regional climate shifts caused by gradual global cooling in the Pliocene epoch

The Earth's climate has undergone a global transition over the past four million years, from warm conditions with global surface temperatures about 3 degrees C warmer than today, smaller ice sheets and higher sea levels to the current cooler conditions. Tectonic changes and their influence on ocean heat transport have been suggested as forcing factors for that transition, including the onset of significant Northern Hemisphere glaciation approximately 2.75 million years ago, but the ultimate causes for the climatic changes are still under debate. Here we compare climate records from high latitudes, subtropical regions and the tropics, indicating that the onset of large glacial/interglacial cycles did not coincide with a specific climate reorganization event at lower latitudes. The regional differences in the timing of cooling imply that global cooling was a gradual process, rather than the response to a single threshold or episodic event as previously suggested. We also find that high-latitude climate sensitivity to variations in solar heating increased gradually, culminating after cool tropical and subtropical upwelling conditions were established two million years ago. Our results suggest that mean low-latitude climate conditions can significantly influence global climate feedbacks.     

龙门山地区印支期正断层及其对沉积相和储层的控制作用

通过关口断裂两盘沉积对比分析,认为关口断裂在印支早期业已生成,断裂性质属正断层;受印支运动正断层的控制,研究区岩相古地理在中三叠世雷口坡期具有东西分异的特点;以龙门山山前断裂为界,岩相古地理格局的东西部差异性明显,沉积水体在川西地区较浅,而在龙门山地区较深.中三叠统天井山组亦发育于此张性大地构造背景下的北东-南西向碳酸盐台槽内,沉积水体较深;晚三叠世马鞍塘期,龙门山地区继承性存在的一系列正断层发育,使得古地势西低东高.     

Deep convection in the Irminger Sea forced by the Greenland tip jet

Open-ocean deep convection, one of the processes by which deep waters of the world's oceans are formed, is restricted to a small number of locations (for example, the Mediterranean and Labrador seas). Recently, the southwest Irminger Sea has been suggested as an additional location for open-ocean deep convection. The deep water formed in the Irminger Sea has the characteristic temperature and salinity of the water mass that fills the mid-depth North Atlantic Ocean, which had been believed to be formed entirely in the Labrador basin. Here we show that the most likely cause of the convection in the Irminger Sea is a low-level atmospheric jet known as the Greenland tip jet, which forms periodically in the lee of Cape Farewell, Greenland, and is associated with elevated heat flux and strong wind stress curl. Using a history of tip-jet events derived from meteorological land station data and a regional oceanic numerical model, we demonstrate that deep convection can occur in this region when the North Atlantic Oscillation Index is high, which is consistent with observations. This mechanism of convection in the Irminger Sea differs significantly from those known to operate in the Labrador and Mediterranean seas.     

大型室内冰场冰温多点检测与数据融合

结合实际论述了室内冰场的冰温多点检测、温度传感器的工作原理，以及数据融合的方法。     

Changes in annual accumulation retrieved from Geladaindong ice core and its relationship to atmospheric circulation over the Tibetan Plateau

Annual accumulation records covering 1935 to 2004 were reconstructed using Geladaindong ice core in the source of Yangtze River. A significant positive correlation between annual accumulation and precipitation from nearby meteorological stations was found, suggesting ice core accumulation could be taken as a precipitation proxy in the region. In the past 70 years, precipitation in the Geladaindong region was low from 1930s to early 1960s, and the lowest value occurred in the later 1950s. Since 1960s, precipitation increased dramatically and reached the maximum around 1980s, then decreased slightly in 1990s. By using Mann-Kendall rank statistical test method, a change point for precipitation was determined in 1967. Analysis of the atmospheric circulation over the Tibetan Plateau suggested that, compared with the southwest wind during the low precipitation period （before 1967）, it extended about 2 latitudes northward during high precipitation period （after 1967）. Moreover, during the high precipitation, the trough over the Bal Karshi Lake was also enhanced, and both the meridional wind and vapor transporting displayed a remarkable aggrandizement.     

Signals of Antarctic Circum-polar Wave over the Southern Indian Ocean as recorded in an Antarctica ice core

Oxygen stable isotopic and ionic records, covering a period of 1745--1996, are recovered in DT001 ice core drilled in Princess Elizabeth Land, East Antarctica.Using empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of the annually resolved glaciochemical time series, we find the first EOF (EOFI) represents sea-salt aerosols and is the proxy of sea level pressure (SLP) over a quasi-stationary low in the Southern Indian Ocean (SIO). δ^18O represents the sea surface temperature (SST) of the same ocean area. In the past two decades, four climatic waves as represented by SLP and SST proxies are found in the DT001 ice core, which in coincident with four Antarctic Circum-polar Waves (ACW) as revealed by NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. The phase difference between SST and SLP in the ice core is also coincident with that in ACW. Both ice-core record and reanalysis suggestthat there were no signals of ACW during 1958--1980, none during the overall recording period between 1745--1996, as there is no regular phase difference between SST and SLP.The ACW signal after early 1980s is probably attributable to the climate shift occurring over Antarctic Peninsula-Drake Passage region.