Sea-level trends across The Bahamas constrain peak last interglacial ice melt.

During the last interglacial (LIG) period, global mean sea level (GMSL) was higher than at present, likely driven by greater high-latitude insolation. Past sea-level estimates require elevation measurements and age determination of marine sediments that formed at or near sea level, and those elevations must be corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). However, this GIA correction is subject to uncertainties in the GIA model inputs, namely, Earth's rheology and past ice history, which reduces precision and accuracy in estimates of past GMSL.

Plant carbon assimilation rates in atmospheric CO reconstructions.

Fossil plant gas-exchange-based CO reconstructions use carbon (C) assimilation rates of extant plant species as substitutes for assimilation rates of fossil plants. However, assumptions in model species adoption can lead to systematic error propagation. We used a dataset of c.

Deep-water circulation changes lead North Atlantic climate during deglaciation.

Constraining the response time of the climate system to changes in North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation is fundamental to improving climate and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation predictability. Here we report a new synchronization of terrestrial, marine, and ice-core records, which allows the first quantitative determination of the response time of North Atlantic climate to changes in high-latitude NADW formation rate during the last deglaciation. Using a continuous record of deep water ventilation from the Nordic Seas, we identify a ∼400-year lead of changes in high-latitude NADW formation ahead of abrupt climate changes recorded in Greenland ice cores at the onset and end of the Younger Dryas stadial, which likely occurred in response to gradual changes in temperature- and wind-driven freshwater transport.

Giant boulders and Last Interglacial storm intensity in the North Atlantic.

As global climate warms and sea level rises, coastal areas will be subject to more frequent extreme flooding and hurricanes. Geologic evidence for extreme coastal storms during past warm periods has the potential to provide fundamental insights into their future intensity. Recent studies argue that during the Last Interglacial (MIS 5e, ∼128-116 ka) tropical and extratropical North Atlantic cyclones may have been more intense than at present, and may have produced waves larger than those observed historically.

Proxy-to-proxy calibration: increasing the temporal resolution of quantitative climate reconstructions.

High-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions are often restricted by the difficulties of sampling geologic archives in great detail and the analytical costs of processing large numbers of samples. Using sediments from Lake Braya Sø, Greenland, we introduce a new method that provides a quantitative high-resolution paleoclimate record by combining measurements of the alkenone unsaturation index (U37(K)) with non-destructive scanning reflectance spectroscopic measurements in the visible range (VIS-RS). The proxy-to-proxy (PTP) method exploits two distinct calibrations: the in situ calibration of U37(K) to lake water temperature and the calibration of scanning VIS-RS data to down core U37(K) data.

Abrupt Holocene climate change as an important factor for human migration in West Greenland.

West Greenland has had multiple episodes of human colonization and cultural transitions over the past 4,500 y. However, the explanations for these large-scale human migrations are varied, including climatic factors, resistance to adaptation, economic marginalization, mercantile exploration, and hostile neighborhood interactions. Evaluating the potential role of climate change is complicated by the lack of quantitative paleoclimate reconstructions near settlement areas and by the relative stability of Holocene temperature derived from ice cores atop the Greenland ice sheet.

An efficient method for isolating individual long-chain alkenones for compound-specific hydrogen isotope analysis.

Hydrogen isotope ratios (2H/H or D/H) of long-chain unsaturated ketones (alkenones) preserved in lake and marine sediments hold great promise for paleoclimate studies. However, compound-specific hydrogen isotope analysis of individual alkenones has not been possible due to chromatographic coelution of alkenones with the same carbon chain length but different numbers of double bonds. Published studies have only reported the deltaD values of the mixture of coeluting alkenones.