Abstract
Abundant evidence from marine, ice-core and terrestrial records demonstrates that Earth’s climate has experienced co-evolution of orbital- and millennial-scale variability through the Pleistocene. The varying magnitude of millennial climate variability (MCV) was linked to orbitally paced glacial cycles over the past 800 kyr. Before this interval, global glaciations were less pronounced but more frequent, yet scarcity of a long-term integration of high-resolution continental and marine records hampers our understanding of the evolution and dynamics of MCV before the mid-Pleistocene transition. Here we present a synthesis of four centennial-resolved elemental time series, which we interpret as proxies for MCV, from North Atlantic, Iberian margin, Balkan Peninsula (Lake Ohrid) and Chinese Loess Plateau. The proxy records reveal that MCV was pervasive and persistent over the mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere during the past 1.5 Myr. Our results suggest that the magnitude of MCV is not only strongly modulated by glacial boundary conditions on Earth after the mid-Pleistocene transition, but also persistently influenced by variations in precession and obliquity through the Pleistocene. The combination of these four proxies into a new MCV stack offers a credible reference for further assessing the dynamical interactions between orbital and millennial climate variability.
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Data availability
The elemental data that support the findings of this research are provided in Extended Data files and in the East Asian Paleoenvironmental Science Database (https://doi.org/10.12262/IEECAS.EAPSD2021001). Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
We thank X. K. Qiang and H. Zhao for conducting palaeomagnetic measurement, H. M. Fan, Y. Li, L. J. Liang, H. Wang, Y. Wang, Y. Yan, J. B. Zhao and M. Zhao for field and laboratory assistance and H. L. Zhao and C. Y. Rui for data analysis. The elemental data of IODP sites U1308 and U1385 were provided by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) (http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo). This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of China (no. 41525008) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (nos. XDB40000000 and 132B61KYSB20170005). The contribution of J.F.M. was supported in part by the US-NSF. X.Z. was supported by grant from the National Science Foundation of China (no. 42075047).
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Y.S. and Z.A. designed the study and initiated the loess drilling project. Y.S., J.F.M., S.C.C., X.Z., H.V., D.H. and Z.A. coordinated the interpretations of proxy data. F.G., T.W. and X.L. contributed to XRF scanning of loess samples and spectral analyses. D.H. contributed the XRF scanning data from the marine cores. All authors participated in discussion and interpretation of the data and provided comments and suggestions for the manuscript.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Correlation of glacial/interglacial transitions and abrupt events in marine and continental records.
a, Chinese cave δ18O record13; (b) Si/Sr of IOPD Site U130812; (c) Ca/Ti of IODP Site U138539; (d) K counts of Lake Ohrid sediment40; and (e) Fe/K of Gulang loess. Blue dashed lines denote rapid glacial/interglacial transitions, and green dashed lines indicate abrupt climate events. Blue diamonds and green dots indicate the first-order and second-order time controls, respectively.
Extended Data Fig. 2 Age models of four centennial-resolved records.
First-order time controls (blue diamonds) denote glacial/interglacial transitions inferred from absolutely dated Chinese speleothem13 and globally stacked benthic δ18O records36. Second-order time controls (green dots) are derived from the timings of weak monsoon events in Chinese Speleothem13 and IRD events in IODP Site U130812. Paleomagnetic boundaries (red triangles) of these four records are also shown for comparison (B/M-Brunhes/Matuyama transition, TJ-Top Jaramillo, BT-Bottom Jaramillo, and CM-Cobb Mountain).
Extended Data Fig. 3 Spectral results of four elemental ratios and cave δ18O.
a, Spectral density of U1308 Si/Sr, U1385 Ca/Ti, and cave δ18O; (b) Spectral density of LO Ca/K, GL Fe/K, and cave δ18O. Grey bars denote millennial peaks above the 90% confidence level (red dashed lines).
Extended Data Fig. 4 Wavelet spectra of high-frequency components and standard deviations (s.d.) of four elemental ratios.
a, Power spectra of high-frequency components of U1308 Si/Sr, U1385 Ca/Ti, LO Ca/K, and GL Fe/K; (b) Power spectra of U1308 Si/Sr-s.d., U1385 Ca/Ti-s.d., LO Ca/K-s.d. and GL Fe/K-s.d. Black contours indicate the 5% significance level against red noise.
Extended Data Fig. 5 Cross-spectral comparison of the s.d. of four elemental ratios with LR04 stack and ETP.
Spectral results (brown) of the STDs of (a) U1308 Si/Sr-s.d. (b) U1385 Ca/Ti-s.d. (c) LO Ca/K-s.d. (d) GL Fe/K-s.d. and their coherency spectra vs. LR04 stack36 (blue) and ETP48 (pink). Spectral density is normalized and plotted on a log scale. Grey bars indicate dominant orbital peaks at the 100-, 41-, 23- and 19-kyr periods. Coherence spectra are plotted above 80% confidence level.
Extended Data Fig. 6 Correlation of abrupt climate events in MCV stack with cave δ18O record13 and synthetic Greenland temperature49.
Detection of abrupt climate events is based on their amplitude (>average deviation) and duration (>0.8 kyr) of high-frequency components of these three records. Light blue bars and pink numbers refer to interglacial marine isotope stages.
Source data
Source Data Fig. 2
Elemental data of U1308, U1385, Lake Ohrid and GL loess.
Source Data Fig. 3
High-frequency components and s.d. of four elemental proxies.
Source Data Fig. 5
MCV stack, speleothem δ180 and Greenland temperature.
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Sun, Y., McManus, J.F., Clemens, S.C. et al. Persistent orbital influence on millennial climate variability through the Pleistocene. Nat. Geosci. 14, 812–818 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00794-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00794-1
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