Correlation of Late Pleistocene Terrestrial Climate Variation From Mono Lake, USA, With Global Records Using Relative Paleointensity

In order to assess different models of global climate variation, it is crucial to be able to accurately correlate terrestrial climate records with each other and with marine climate records. This problem is especially challenging in intervals older than 30 kyr, when problems with accuracy and precision of 14C ages become significant. Recently published stacks of global, high-resolution variation in intensity of Earth's past magnetic field (North and South Atlantic PaleoIntensity Stacks, NAPIS and SAPIS) enable correlation of high-quality terrestrial records of paleointensity with the GISP2 timescale. The lacustrine sediments of the Wilson Creek Formation (Mono Basin, CA) are known to be excellent recorders of Pleistocene climate and geomagnetic field variation, and are the type locality for the Mono Lake paleomagnetic excursion (MLE). Here we present rock magnetic analyses showing that the sediments also fit the criteria required for good recorders of paleomagnetic intensity, with a magnetic fraction dominated by fine-grained magnetite with concentration variation <3. Both the type section and South Shore cliffs were sampled continuously at 2 cm resolution, and susceptibility and Natural, Anhysteretic, and Isothermal Remnant Magnetizations (NRM, ARM, and IRM) were measured on all samples. IRM was chosen to normalize the NRM for paleointensity, though NRM/ARM produces a similar curve. The resulting records are similar both to each other and to the NAPIS and SAPIS curves, allowing correlation of the Wilson Creek sediments to the GISP2 timescale. We have used two independent age constraints to frame our correlation to NAPIS and SAPIS; first, carbonate 14C and tephra 40Ar/39Ar ages agree to 32 ka, which is thus used as an upper tie point. Second, the lakes of the Great Basin have been shown to be strongly controlled by the 100 ka cycle, and so we infer lake transgression over the Wilson Creek site at the M.I.S. 5/4 boundary, fixing the maximum age of sediment deposition. We then use distinctive features of the Mono and global paleo-intensity records to refine the correlation, resulting in an age of 68 ka for the oldest sediments, and 40 ka for the MLE, coeval with the Laschamp excursion. Finally, we compare climatic proxies measured at Mono to regional and global records, with major changes in glacial proxies at M.I.S. 4/3 boundary and evidence for low lake levels at the time of Heinrich events.