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Were last glacial climate events simultaneous between Greenland and France? A quantitative comparison using non‐tuned chronologies
Author(s) -
Blaauw Maarten,
Wohlfarth Barbara,
Christen J. Andrés,
Ampel Linda,
Veres Daniel,
Hughen Konrad A.,
Preusser Frank,
Svensson Anders
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of quaternary science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.142
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1099-1417
pISSN - 0267-8179
DOI - 10.1002/jqs.1330
Subject(s) - proxy (statistics) , ice core , glacial period , geology , climatology , paleoclimatology , climate change , little ice age , physical geography , geography , oceanography , paleontology , machine learning , computer science
Several large abrupt climate fluctuations during the last glacial have been recorded in Greenland ice cores and archives from other regions. Often these Dansgaard–Oeschger events are assumed to have been synchronous over wide areas, and then used as tie‐points to link chronologies between the proxy archives. However, it has not yet been tested independently whether or not these events were indeed synchronous over large areas. Here, we compare Dansgaard–Oeschger‐type events in a well‐dated record from southeastern France with those in Greenland ice cores. Instead of assuming simultaneous climate events between both archives, we keep their age models independent. Even these well‐dated archives possess large chronological uncertainties that prevent us from inferring synchronous climate events at decadal to multi‐centennial time scales. If possible, comparisons between proxy archives should be based on independent, non‐tuned time‐scales. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.