Reconstruction and attribution of Late-Pleistocene changes in the Earth’s energy imbalance

Saray Sanchez; Peter U. Clark; Chenyu Zhu; Jonathan M. Gregory; Zhengyu Liu; Feng He

Reconstruction and attribution of Late-Pleistocene changes in the Earth’s energy imbalance

Saray Sanchez
, Peter U. Clark
, Chenyu Zhu
, Jonathan M. Gregory
, Zhengyu Liu
, Feng He

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

Abstract

The Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) that develops at the top of the atmosphere is accommodated by gains or losses of energy in Earth’s heat reservoirs, leading to temperature and sea-level change. The global ocean has stored about 90% of the EEI from anthropogenic forcing, but the attribution of past changes of EEI remains largely unknown, thus obscuring our understanding of past climate change. Here we reconstruct changes in mean ocean temperature over the past 150,000 years that, with a reconstruction of ice-sheet-volume changes, allows us to isolate the contributions of the dominant ocean and ice-sheet heat reservoirs to the global energy inventory as well as to derive their associated contributions to EEI. We attribute orbital-scale EEI variability to joint precessional and CO2 forcing that caused changes in rates of ice-sheet energy storage. In contrast, millennial-scale EEI variability can be attributed to radiative responses to decreases in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and increasing CO2 during Heinrich stadials that caused changes in rates of ocean energy storage.

Original language	English
Journal	Science Advances
Publication status	Accepted - 14 Jul 2026

Data Availability Statement

All data and code needed to evaluate and reproduce the results in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. This study did not
generate new materials.

Funding

Support for this research was also provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (to F.H.). We would like to acknowledge computing support from the Yellowstone: IBM iDataPlex System (http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7wd3xhc), the Cheyenne: HPE/SGI ICE XA System (doi:10.5065/D6RX99HX) and the Casper system (https://ncar.pub/casper) provided by the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Funding: ZL was funded by the National Science Foundation OCE-1810681 (ZL). CZ was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China 42575052.

UN SDGs

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

SDG 13 Climate Action
SDG 15 Life on Land

Embargoed Document

Sanchez_ms_template_Combined
Author Accepted Manuscript, 3.97 MB
Licence: CC BY
Embargo ends: 14/08/26

Cite this

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title = "Reconstruction and attribution of Late-Pleistocene changes in the Earth{\textquoteright}s energy imbalance",

abstract = "The Earth{\textquoteright}s energy imbalance (EEI) that develops at the top of the atmosphere is accommodated by gains or losses of energy in Earth{\textquoteright}s heat reservoirs, leading to temperature and sea-level change. The global ocean has stored about 90\% of the EEI from anthropogenic forcing, but the attribution of past changes of EEI remains largely unknown, thus obscuring our understanding of past climate change. Here we reconstruct changes in mean ocean temperature over the past 150,000 years that, with a reconstruction of ice-sheet-volume changes, allows us to isolate the contributions of the dominant ocean and ice-sheet heat reservoirs to the global energy inventory as well as to derive their associated contributions to EEI. We attribute orbital-scale EEI variability to joint precessional and CO2 forcing that caused changes in rates of ice-sheet energy storage. In contrast, millennial-scale EEI variability can be attributed to radiative responses to decreases in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and increasing CO2 during Heinrich stadials that caused changes in rates of ocean energy storage. ",

author = "Saray Sanchez and Clark, \{Peter U.\} and Chenyu Zhu and Gregory, \{Jonathan M.\} and Zhengyu Liu and Feng He",

year = "2026",

month = jul,

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language = "English",

journal = "Science Advances",

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AU - Sanchez, Saray

AU - Clark, Peter U.

AU - Zhu, Chenyu

AU - Gregory, Jonathan M.

AU - Liu, Zhengyu

AU - He, Feng

PY - 2026/7/14

Y1 - 2026/7/14

N2 - The Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) that develops at the top of the atmosphere is accommodated by gains or losses of energy in Earth’s heat reservoirs, leading to temperature and sea-level change. The global ocean has stored about 90% of the EEI from anthropogenic forcing, but the attribution of past changes of EEI remains largely unknown, thus obscuring our understanding of past climate change. Here we reconstruct changes in mean ocean temperature over the past 150,000 years that, with a reconstruction of ice-sheet-volume changes, allows us to isolate the contributions of the dominant ocean and ice-sheet heat reservoirs to the global energy inventory as well as to derive their associated contributions to EEI. We attribute orbital-scale EEI variability to joint precessional and CO2 forcing that caused changes in rates of ice-sheet energy storage. In contrast, millennial-scale EEI variability can be attributed to radiative responses to decreases in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and increasing CO2 during Heinrich stadials that caused changes in rates of ocean energy storage.

AB - The Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) that develops at the top of the atmosphere is accommodated by gains or losses of energy in Earth’s heat reservoirs, leading to temperature and sea-level change. The global ocean has stored about 90% of the EEI from anthropogenic forcing, but the attribution of past changes of EEI remains largely unknown, thus obscuring our understanding of past climate change. Here we reconstruct changes in mean ocean temperature over the past 150,000 years that, with a reconstruction of ice-sheet-volume changes, allows us to isolate the contributions of the dominant ocean and ice-sheet heat reservoirs to the global energy inventory as well as to derive their associated contributions to EEI. We attribute orbital-scale EEI variability to joint precessional and CO2 forcing that caused changes in rates of ice-sheet energy storage. In contrast, millennial-scale EEI variability can be attributed to radiative responses to decreases in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and increasing CO2 during Heinrich stadials that caused changes in rates of ocean energy storage.

M3 - Article

SN - 2375-2548

JO - Science Advances

JF - Science Advances

ER -

Reconstruction and attribution of Late-Pleistocene changes in the Earth’s energy imbalance

Abstract

Data Availability Statement

Funding

UN SDGs

Embargoed Document

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