Author ORCID Identifier
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-4-2022
Abstract
Glacial–interglacial cycles constitute large natural variations in Earth’s climate. The Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) marks a shift of the dominant periodicity of these climate cycles from ∼40 to ∼100 kyr. Recently, it has been suggested that this shift resulted from a gradual increase in the internal period (or equivalently, a decrease in the natural frequency) of the system. As a result, the system would then have locked to ever higher multiples of the external forcing period. We find that the internal period is sensitive to the strength of positive feedbacks in the climate system. Using a carbon cycle model in which feedbacks between calcifier populations and ocean alkalinity mediate atmospheric CO2, we simulate stepwise periodicity changes similar to the MPT through such a mechanism. Due to the internal dynamics of the system, the periodicity shift occurs up to millions of years after the change in the feedback strength is imposed. This suggests that the cause for the MPT may have occurred a significant time before the observed periodicity shift.
Keywords
glacial cycles, mid-pleistocene transition, bifurcation, carbon cycle, feedbacks
Language
English
Publication Title
Climate Dynamics
Rights
© The Author(s) 2022. This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Shackleton, J.D., Follows, M.J., Thomas, P.J. et al. The Mid-Pleistocene Transition: a delayed response to an increasing positive feedback?. Clim Dyn 60, 4083–4098 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06544-2
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version