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RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE: OCEAN RESPONSES TO EARTH SYSTEM INSTABILITY IN THE LATE QUATERNARY
James P Kennett Department of Geological Sciences and Marine Science Institute University of California Santa Barbara and Larry C Peterson Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science University of Miami

A RAPID CLIMATE OSCILLATOR IN THE LATE QUATERNARY
Until recently most Earth scientists believed that past climate change occurred on relatively long time scales of tens of thousands of years or more Most also thought that climate change was controlled largely by changes in the distribution of solar radiation with Earth's orbital oscillations providing an external forcing to the climate system and pacing the so called Milankovitch cycles However dramatic discoveries during the early s changed this paradigm Climatic records produced from the Greenland ice sheet and in nearby marine sediments of the North Atlantic altered the way Earth scientists thought about the operation of

Earth's climate system and the relative sensitivity of this system to major climatic shifts

Age
(Years before present) 0 cold 5,000

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Paleoclimate studies of Greenland ice cores (Dansgaard et al ) were the first to reveal a remarkable sequence of major rapid millennial scale oscillations in the climate system during the last ice age (Fig ) superimposed on the more gradual orbitally driven insolation cycles Because of high accumulation rates of snow over Greenland ice cores from this location are able to resolve climate changes occurring within decades or less revealing late Quaternary climate behavior never before observed The initial ice core work demonstrated that the climate oscillations (now known as Dansgaard/Oeschger [D/O] cycles) essentially reflect a “flickering” of the climate system between warm and cold states (Fig ) with air temperature shifts Surface Ocean

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