South American Monsoon variability during the past 2,000 years from stable isotopic proxies and model simulations
Abstract
The rapidly growing number of high-resolution stable isotopic proxies from speleothems, ice cores and lake sediments, located in the South American summer monsoon (SASM) belt, will soon allow for a comprehensive analysis of climate variability in the South American tropics and subtropics over the past ~ 2000 years. In combination with isotope-enabled General Circulation Models (GCMs) this offers new prospects for better understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of the South American monsoon system and for diagnosing its sensitivities to external forcing mechanisms (solar, volcanic) and modes of ocean-atmosphere variability (e.g. ENSO and AMO). In this presentation we will discuss the rationale for interpreting isotopic excursions recorded in various proxies from the Andes, northeastern and southeastern Brazil as indicative of changes in monsoon intensity. We will focus on the past 2 millenia when isotopic proxies from the SASM region show a very coherent behavior regardless of the type of archive or their location. All proxies exhibit significant decadal to multidecadal variability, superimposed on large excursions during three key periods, the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Current Warm Period (CWP). We interpret these three periods as times when the SASM mean state was significantly weakened (MCA and CWP) and strengthened (LIA), respectively. During the LIA each of the proxy archives considered contains the most negative delta-18O values recorded during the entire record length. On the other hand the monsoon strength is currently rather weak in a 2000- year historical perspective, rivaled only by the low intensity during the MCA. One interpretation of these centennial-scale climate anomalies suggests that they were at least partially driven by temperature changes in the northern hemisphere and in particular over the North Atlantic, leading to a latitudinal displacement of the ITCZ and a change in monsoon intensity and degree of rainout upstream of the proxy locations, over the tropical continent. This interpretation is supported by several independent proxy archives and modeling studies. One question that remains, however, is how ENSO, arguably the main forcing factor for delta-18O variability over tropical South America on interannual time scales, interacts with and may be modulated by low-frequency North Atlantic forcing. Our analysis also implies that isotopic proxies, because of their ability to integrate climatic information on large spatial scales, are complementary to more traditional proxies such as tree rings or historical archives, which record in-situ climate variations. Future climate reconstructions therefore should make an effort to include isotopic proxies as large-scale predictors in order to better constrain past changes in the atmospheric circulation.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFMPP24B..06V
- Keywords:
-
- 1616 GLOBAL CHANGE / Climate variability;
- 3344 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Paleoclimatology;
- 4914 PALEOCEANOGRAPHY / Continental climate records;
- 4924 PALEOCEANOGRAPHY / Geochemical tracers