Interglacial instability of North Atlantic Deep Water ventilation.

Disrupting North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) ventilation is a key concern in climate projections. We use (sub)centennially resolved bottom water δC records that span the interglacials of the last 0.5 million years to assess the frequency of and the climatic backgrounds capable of triggering large NADW reductions.

A low climate threshold for south Greenland Ice Sheet demise during the Late Pleistocene.

The Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has been losing mass at an accelerating rate over the recent decades. Models suggest a possible temperature threshold between 0.8 and 3.

Asynchronous Antarctic and Greenland ice-volume contributions to the last interglacial sea-level highstand.

The last interglacial (LIG; ~130 to ~118 thousand years ago, ka) was the last time global sea level rose well above the present level. Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) contributions were insufficient to explain the highstand, so that substantial Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) reduction is implied. However, the nature and drivers of GrIS and AIS reductions remain enigmatic, even though they may be critical for understanding future sea-level rise.

Rapid reductions in North Atlantic Deep Water during the peak of the last interglacial period.

Deep ocean circulation has been considered relatively stable during interglacial periods, yet little is known about its behavior on submillennial time scales. Using a subcentennially resolved epibenthic foraminiferal δ(13)C record, we show that the influence of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) was strong at the onset of the last interglacial period and was then interrupted by several prominent centennial-scale reductions. These NADW transients occurred during periods of increased ice rafting and southward expansions of polar water influence, suggesting that a buoyancy threshold for convective instability was triggered by freshwater and circum-Arctic cryosphere changes.