Response of interior North America to abrupt climate oscillations in the North Atlantic region during the last deglaciation

Abstract

Several broad-scale climatic oscillations during the last deglaciation are well documented in regions around the North Atlantic Ocean. This paper reviews empirical evidence for these deglacial climatic oscillations from non-coastal North America and discusses implications for testing climatic simulations and for understanding the cause and transmittal mechanisms. Paleoclimatic interpretation of oxygen-isotope records from several small sites in the eastern Great Lakes region indicates a classic deglacial climatic sequence that is comparable with records from Europe and Greenland. The climatic events as interpreted from Crawford Lake oxygen isotopes include the Bølling–Allerød (BOA) warming at ∼12,700 14C BP, a warm BOA at ∼12,500–10,920 14C BP, an intra-Allerød cold period shortly before 11,000 14C BP, a cold Younger Dryas (YD) climate reversal at 10,920–10,000 14C BP, the Holocene warming at 10,000 14C BP, a brief Preboreal Oscillation (PB) at 9650 14C BP, and an early-Holocene cold event at 7500 14C BP (8200 cal BP). Some of these events were also evident from changes in upland and aquatic vegetation and sediment lithology. The pronounced YD climatic reversal has been documented from pollen records along the ecotones at this time and from glacier readvances in the Great Lakes region. Along the Rocky Mountains from Alberta to Colorado, the YD event is indicated by alpine glacier advance and/or shift in timberline vegetation. In Minnesota and upper New York, early-Holocene climatic instability is also suggested by oxygen-isotope records and/or varve thickness. The regional variations in evidence for the YD and other events in North America suggest that climatic oscillations may have different expressions in paleo-records, depending on geographic location and characteristics of a particular site. The extent and magnitude of these climatic oscillations across North America suggest that these oscillations are an expression of climatic change that was probably widespread rather than locally induced by a nearby glacier. The location of these sites implies that climatic signals were likely carried over the Northern Hemisphere through the atmosphere, as indicated by general circulation models. We hypothesize that the lack of evidence for a cold YD in interior North America west of the Great Lakes region and east of the Rocky Mountains was caused by the trapping of cold arctic air mass north of the Laurentide ice sheet and by uninterrupted northward expansion of warm Caribbean air; this strongly contrasted climate also produced non-analogous biological assemblages.