Interhemispheric synchrony of Late-glacial climatic instability as recorded in proglacial Lake Mascardi, Argentina

Abstract

Several high-resolution continental records have been reported recently in sites in South America, but the extent to which climatic variations were synchronous between the northern and southern hemispheres during the Late-glacial–Holocene transition, and the causes of the climatic changes, remain open questions. Previous investigations indicated that, east of the Andes, the middle and high latitudes of South America warmed uniformly and rapidly from 13 000 14C yr BP, with no indication of subsequent climate fluctuations, equivalent, for example, to the Younger Dryas cooling. Here we present a multiproxy continuous record, radiocarbon dated by accelerated mass spectroscopy, from proglacial Lake Mascardi in Argentina. The results show that unstable climatic conditions, comparable to those described from records obtained in the Northern Hemisphere, dominated the Late-glacial–Holocene transition in Argentina at this latitude. Furthermore, a significant advance of the Tronador ice-cap, which feeds Lake Mascardi, occurred during the Younger Dryas Chronozone. This instability suggests a step-wise climatic history reflecting a global, rather than regional, forcing mechanism. The Lake Mascardi record, therefore, provides strong support for the hypothesis that ocean–atmosphere interaction, rather than global ocean circulation alone, governed interhemispheric climate teleconnections during the last deglaciation. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.