Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influenced by variations in solar output through the entire Holocene. The evidence comes from a close correlation between inferred changes in production rates of the cosmogenic nuclides carbon-14 and beryllium-10 and centennial to millennial time scale changes in proxies of drift ice measured in deep-sea sediment cores. A solar forcing mechanism therefore may underlie at least the Holocene segment of the North Atlantic's "1500-year" cycle. The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally.

Evidence from North Atlantic deep sea cores reveals that abrupt shifts punctuated what is conventionally thought to have been a relatively stable Holocene climate. During each of these episodes, cool, ice-bearing waters from north of Iceland were advected as far south as the latitude of Britain. At about the same times, the atmospheric circulation above Greenland changed abruptly. Pacings of the Holocene events and of abrupt climate shifts during the last glaciation are statistically the same; together, they make up a series of climate shifts with a cyclicity close to 1470 ± 500 years. The Holocene events, therefore, appear to be the most recent manifestation of a pervasive millennial-scale climate cycle operating independently of the glacial-interglacial climate state. Amplification of the cycle during the last glaciation may have been linked to the North Atlantic's thermohaline circulation.

New evidence from deep-sea sediment cores in the subpolar North Atlantic demonstrates that a significant component of sub-Milankovitch climate variability occurs in distinct 1-2 kyr cycles. We have traced that cyclicity from the present to within marine isotope stage 5, an interval spanning more than 80 kyrs. The most robust indicators of the cycle are repeated increases in the percentages of two petrologic tracers, Icelandic glass and hematite-stained grains. Both are sensitive measures of ice rafting episodes associated with ocean surface coolings. The petrologic tracers exhibit a consistent relation to Heinrich events, implying that mechanisms forcing Heinrich events were closely linked to those forcing the cyclicity. Our records further suggest that Dansgaard/Oeschger events may be amplifications of the cycle brought about by the impact of iceberg (fresh water) discharges on North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. The tendency of thermohaline circulation to undergo threshold behavior only when fresh water input is relatively large may explain the absence of Dansgaard/Oeschger events in the Holocene and their long pacings (thousands of years) in the early part of the glaciation. Finally, evidence from cores near Newfoundland confirms previous suggestions that the Little Ice Age was the most recent cold phase of the 1-2 kyr cycle and that the North Atlantic tended to oscillate in a muted Dansgaard/Oeschger-like mode during the Holocene.