Carbon isotopes characterize rapid changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation
Abstract
An understanding of the mechanisms that control CO2 change during glacial-interglacial cycles remains elusive. Here we help to constrain changing sources with a high-precision, high-resolution deglacial record of the stable isotopic composition of carbon in CO2 (δ13C-CO2) in air extracted from ice samples from Taylor Glacier, Antarctica. During the initial rise in atmospheric CO2 from 17.6 to 15.5 ka, these data demarcate a decrease in δ13C-CO2, likely due to a weakened oceanic biological pump. From 15.5 to 11.5 ka, the continued atmospheric CO2 rise of 40 ppm is associated with small changes in δ13C-CO2, consistent with a nearly equal contribution from a further weakening of the biological pump and rising ocean temperature. These two trends, related to marine sources, are punctuated at 16.3 and 12.9 ka with abrupt, century-scale perturbations in δ13C-CO2 that suggest rapid oxidation of organic land carbon or enhanced air-sea gas exchange in the Southern Ocean. Additional century-scale increases in atmospheric CO2 coincident with increases in atmospheric CH4 and Northern Hemisphere temperature at the onset of the Bølling (14.6-14.3 ka) and Holocene (11.6-11.4 ka) intervals are associated with small changes in δ13C-CO2, suggesting a combination of sources that included rising surface ocean temperature.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- March 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1513868113
- Bibcode:
- 2016PNAS..113.3465B
- Keywords:
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- ice cores;
- paleoclimate;
- carbon cycle;
- atmospheric CO2;
- last deglaciation;
- Physical Sciences,Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences