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Science 23 June 2000:
Vol. 288. no. 5474, pp. 2198 - 2202
DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5474.2198
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Reports

Coherent High- and Low-Latitude Climate Variability During the Holocene Warm Period

Peter deMenocal, 1* Joseph Ortiz, 1 Tom Guilderson, 2 Michael Sarnthein 3

A faunal record of sea-surface temperature (SST) variations off West Africa documents a series of abrupt, millennial-scale cooling events, which punctuated the Holocene warm period. These events evidently resulted from increased southward advection of cooler temperate or subpolar waters to this subtropical location or from enhanced regional upwelling. The most recent of these events was the Little Ice Age, which occurred between 1300 to 1850 A.D., when subtropical SSTs were reduced by 3° to 4°C. These events were synchronous with Holocene changes in subpolar North Atlantic SSTs, documenting a strong, in-phase link between millennial-scale variations in high- and low-latitude climate during the Holocene.

1 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
2 Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA.
3 Institut für Geowissenschaften, Universität Kiel, Kiel, Germany.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: peter{at}ldeo.columbia.edu

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