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Science 15 September 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5486, pp. 1897 - 1902
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5486.1897
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Research Articles

The 100,000-Year Ice-Age Cycle Identified and Found to Lag Temperature, Carbon Dioxide, and Orbital Eccentricity

Nicholas J. Shackleton

The deep-sea sediment oxygen isotopic composition (delta 18O) record is dominated by a 100,000-year cyclicity that is universally interpreted as the main ice-age rhythm. Here, the ice volume component of this delta 18O signal was extracted by using the record of delta 18O in atmospheric oxygen trapped in Antarctic ice at Vostok, precisely orbitally tuned. The benthic marine delta 18O record is heavily contaminated by the effect of deep-water temperature variability, but by using the Vostok record, the delta 18O signals of ice volume, deep-water temperature, and additional processes affecting air delta 18O (that is, a varying Dole effect) were separated. At the 100,000-year period, atmospheric carbon dioxide, Vostok air temperature, and deep-water temperature are in phase with orbital eccentricity, whereas ice volume lags these three variables. Hence, the 100,000-year cycle does not arise from ice sheet dynamics; instead, it is probably the response of the global carbon cycle that generates the eccentricity signal by causing changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.

Department of Earth Sciences, Godwin Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3SA, UK. E-mail: njs5{at}cam.ac.uk

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)