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Science 25 November 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5752, pp. 1313 - 1317
DOI: 10.1126/science.1120130
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Reports

Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene

Urs Siegenthaler1, Thomas F. Stocker1*, Eric Monnin1, Dieter Lüthi1, Jakob Schwander1, Bernhard Stauffer1, Dominique Raynaud2, Jean-Marc Barnola2, Hubertus Fischer3, Valérie Masson-Delmotte4 and Jean Jouzel4

1 Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland.
2 Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement (CNRS), 54 Rue Molières, 38402 St. Martin d'Hères Cedex, France.
3 Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Columbusstrasse, D-27568 Bremerhaven, Germany.
4 Institut Pierre Simon Laplace/Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA-CNRS 1572, CE Saclay, Orme des Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.


Fig. 1. Dome C CO2 Bern data (black solid circles) are the mean of four to six samples, including the data from 31 depth intervals over termination V of (1); error bars denote 1{sigma} of the mean. Red solid circles are test measurements with the use of the sublimation extraction technique. Dome C CO2 Grenoble data are shown as black open circles. Dome C CO2 measurements are connected with a blue line, and the high-resolution deuterium record is given as a black line (18). Benthic {delta}18O stack and benthic {delta}18O record from ODP site 980 are shown as a dark gray line (19) and a light gray line (19–22), respectively. The EDC2 time scale for Dome C is the same as in (1) (the depths at the top of the figure are only valid for the CO2 record). Glacial terminations are given in roman numerals; marine isotope stages are given in arabic numerals according to (17). [View Larger Version of this Image (31K GIF file)]
 

Fig. 2. CO2 results of entire MIS 11, including end of MIS 12. Dome C CO2 Bern data (solid circles) from EPICA community members (1) and this work; error bars, 1{sigma} of the mean. Dome C CO2 Grenoble data are indicated by open circles; error bars, accuracy of 2{sigma} = 3 ppmv. High-resolution deuterium record is shown as a black line (18). Vostok CO2 Grenoble data are indicated by gray open diamonds; error bars, accuracy of 2{sigma} = 3 ppmv on the corrected time scale (28). [View Larger Version of this Image (22K GIF file)]
 

Fig. 3. Correlation between {delta}D, a proxy for Antarctic temperature, and CO2 for three data sets. The new data from Dome C cover the beginning of MIS 12 to MIS 16 (black solid circles; black line is the linear fit {delta}D = 0.44{per thousand} ppmv –1 x CO2 – 517.75{per thousand}, r2 = 0.57), and the period from MIS 1 to MIS 11 is covered by data from the Vostok ice core [gray solid circles (7); gray line is linear fit, {delta}D = 0.50{per thousand} ppmv–1 x CO2 – 575.86{per thousand}, r2 = 0.70] and Dome C Holocene and termination I [black open circles (9, 11); black dashed line is the linear fit, {delta}D = 0.50{per thousand} ppmv–1 x CO2 – 529.87{per thousand}, r2 = 0.84]. The offset in the {delta}D values from these two cores is due to the different distances to the open ocean, elevations, and surface temperatures of the two sites (29). [View Larger Version of this Image (34K GIF file)]
 

Fig. 4. A composite CO2 record over six and a half ice age cycles, back to 650,000 years B.P. The record results from the combination of CO2 data from three Antarctic ice cores: Dome C (black), 0 to 22 kyr B.P. (9, 11) and 390 to 650 kyr B.P. [this work including data from 31 depth intervals over termination V of (1)]; Vostok (blue), 0 to 420 kyr B.P. (5, 7), and Taylor Dome (light green), 20 to 62 yr B.P. (8). Black line indicates {delta}D from Dome C, 0 to 400 kyr B.P. (1) and 400 to 650 kyr B.P. (18). Blue line indicates {delta}D from Vostok, 0 to 420 kyr B.P. (7). [View Larger Version of this Image (22K GIF file)]
 

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