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Climate change

Sudden end of an interglacial

Nature volume 390, pages 117–119 (1997)Cite this article

Much of humankind's development as an agrarian and then industrial society has occurred during the current Holocene interglacial period, a roughly 9,000-year stretch of anomalously mild and stable climate (although it may not seem so at times). In geological time, such conditions are a rarity, and they can by no means be taken for granted. Hence the interest in finding out how stable interglacials really are, and what processes might act to bring them to a sudden close.

On page 154of this issue1 Adkins and colleagues present one of the most detailed pictures yet of ocean conditions during the previous interglacial. Using a new geochemical approach to sediment dating (see box, overleaf), they first show that the interval during which global ice volume was comparable to or less than today's lasted from about 129,000 to 119,000 years ago. They then show that the ‘conveyor belt’ circulation which today carries ocean heat north from the tropics and warms much of Europe remained strong and relatively steady throughout the interval. Most interestingly, they also find evidence that the onset of ice growth marking the end of the interglacial was accompanied by a sudden reduction in conveyor circulation, which took only 400 years and from which the climate system apparently never recovered.

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Figure 1: Core vessel.

IFRTP/M. LE COZ

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scott Lehman is in the Department of Geological Sciences and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Campus Box 450, Boulder, 80309, Colorado, USA

    Scott Lehman

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  1. Scott Lehman
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Lehman, S. Sudden end of an interglacial. Nature 390, 117–119 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/36445

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