Rapid climate variability in the North Pacific Ocean during the past 95,000 years

Abstract

RECENT studies of Greenland ice cores1–3 and North Atlantic deep-sea sediments4,5 have yielded evidence for rapid changes in climate during the last glaciation and the preceding inter glacial period. Similar variability has been observed in lake deposits in France6 and in sediments from the California margin7, but there are no records of rapid climate variability from the high-latitude North Pacific region. Here we present two high-resolution records of the input of ice-rafted detritus to the sub-arctic Pacific Ocean, derived from two sediment cores using a γ-ray attenuation technique that provides a measure of the ratio of biogenic opal to terrigenous material. The temporal variability of ice rafting is similar to that of the oxygen isotope record of the GRIP Greenland ice core1, implying that the rapid climate variability of the circum-Atlantic region over the past 95,000 years could be a circumpolar phenomenon.