Dust-climate couplings over the past 800,000 years from the EPICA Dome C ice core

Strengthening of North American dust sources during the late Pliocene (2.7 Ma)

“…For example the analysis of dust particles in ice cores from the Antarctic continent shows that throughout the last 800 ka the dust flux to Antarctica was 25 times higher during glacials than during interglacials (Lambert et al, 2008). Although dust deposition in the low-latitudes was also higher during glacials (deMenocal, 1995;McGee et al, 2010;Tiedemann et al, 1994;Winckler et al, 2008), it was lower than the glacial flux in the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere (Lambert et al, 2008;Martínez-Garcia et al, 2009.…”

“…Hence, it allows for a better resolution of the time series variability in the frequency range of obliquity (41 ka) and precession (23 and 19 ka), but it also attenuates some of the spectral power concentrated in lower frequencies (≥100 ka). Because high latitude dust deposition appears to be exponentially rather than linearly linked to climate (Lambert et al, 2008;Martínez-Garcia et al, 2009), in the case of the n-alkane records the logarithm of both concentrations and mass accumulation rates was used to compute the evolutionary spectra.…”

“…For example the analysis of dust particles in ice cores from the Antarctic continent shows that throughout the last 800 ka the dust flux to Antarctica was 25 times higher during glacials than during interglacials (Lambert et al, 2008). Although dust deposition in the low-latitudes was also higher during glacials (deMenocal, 1995;McGee et al, 2010;Tiedemann et al, 1994;Winckler et al, 2008), it was lower than the glacial flux in the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere (Lambert et al, 2008;Martínez-Garcia et al, 2009. The 5 to 8 times higher dust deposition during glacials in the Southern Ocean (Kumar et al, 1995;Martínez-Garcia et al, 2009 has been explained by the effect of continental ice sheets in Patagonia that act as an amplifying mechanism for dust emission in the higher latitudes (Ridgwell and Watson, 2002;Sugden et al, 2009;Winckler et al, 2008), while the even greater increase seen in Antarctic dust fluxes is attributed to the additional effect of a more efficient transport mechanism during glacials (Lambert et al, 2008).…”

Periodic 1.5 ka climate variations during MIS 2 in the belt of Southern Hemispheric westerlies

“…Increased Patagonian dust production during the glacial period is related to several factors-for example, increased glacial and fluvial erosion in mountain regions (Petit et al, 1999), exposure of the South American shelf as a potential source area for continental dust (Kaiser and Lamy, 2010), increased proglacial meltwater dynamic (Sugden et al, 2009), and intensified foehn winds increasing aridity (Kaiser and Lamy, 2010) and reducing atmospheric dust outwash (Lambert et al, 2008).…”

Climatology of stable isotopes in Antarctic snow and ice: Current status and prospects

“…A drilling has successfully reached the bedrock at the Dome F site providing an ice core which covers more than 700 ka [5]. The robust couplings of dust-climate and CO 2 -climate over the glacial-interglacial timescales are also revealed by a comparison between   D (  18 O) and the corresponding dust and CO 2 records from the same ice cores, taking account of the ice core ice-age and gas-age difference [6][7][8]. These results contribute significantly to our understanding of the Earth's climatic and environmental evolution during ) provides a second-order stable isotopic information, which reflects the kinetic fractionation during evaporation.…”