Global and regional temperature change over the past 4.5 million years

Peter U. Clark; Jeremy D. Shakun; Yair Rosenthal; Peter Köhler; Patrick J. Bartlein

doi:10.1126/science.adi1908

Global and regional temperature change over the past 4.5 million years

Peter U. Clark
, Jeremy D. Shakun
, Yair Rosenthal
, Peter Köhler
, Patrick J. Bartlein

Boston College

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

137 Citations (Scopus)

590 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Much of our understanding of Cenozoic climate is based on the record of d O measured in benthic foraminifera. However, this measurement reflects a combined signal of global temperature and sea level, thus preventing a clear understanding of the interactions and feedbacks of the climate system in causing global temperature change. Our new reconstruction of temperature change over the past 4.5 million years includes two phases of long-term cooling, with the second phase of accelerated cooling during the Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.5 to 0.9 million years ago) being accompanied by a transition from dominant 41,000-year low-amplitude periodicity to dominant 100,000-year high-amplitude periodicity. Changes in the rates of long-term cooling and variability are consistent with changes in the carbon cycle driven initially by geologic processes, followed by additional changes in the Southern Ocean carbon cycle.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	884-890
Number of pages	7
Journal	Science
Volume	383
Issue number	6685
Early online date	22 Feb 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi1908
Publication status	Published online - 22 Feb 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.

Funding

We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments, the paleoclimate and paleoceanographic communities for making their datasets widely available, the National Centers for Environmental Information of NOAA and the World Data Center PANGAEA for archiving data, and C. Brierley and J. Tindall for providing climate model data. This publication contributed to Beyond EPICA, a project of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Oldest Ice Core). This is Beyond EPICA publication number 35. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant OPP-2103032 to P.U.C. and grant OCE-1834208 to Y.R.) and the University of Oregon Fund for Faculty Excellence (P.J.B.).

Funders	Funder number
National Science Foundation	OPP-2103032, OCE-1834208
University of Oregon

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 13 Climate Action

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10.1126/science.adi1908

Global and Regional Temperature Change Over-AAMAuthor Accepted Manuscript, 13.2 MB

Cite this

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abstract = "Much of our understanding of Cenozoic climate is based on the record of d O measured in benthic foraminifera. However, this measurement reflects a combined signal of global temperature and sea level, thus preventing a clear understanding of the interactions and feedbacks of the climate system in causing global temperature change. Our new reconstruction of temperature change over the past 4.5 million years includes two phases of long-term cooling, with the second phase of accelerated cooling during the Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.5 to 0.9 million years ago) being accompanied by a transition from dominant 41,000-year low-amplitude periodicity to dominant 100,000-year high-amplitude periodicity. Changes in the rates of long-term cooling and variability are consistent with changes in the carbon cycle driven initially by geologic processes, followed by additional changes in the Southern Ocean carbon cycle.",

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AU - Shakun, Jeremy D.

AU - Rosenthal, Yair

AU - Köhler, Peter

AU - Bartlein, Patrick J.

PY - 2024/2/22

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Global and regional temperature change over the past 4.5 million years

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

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