Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Millennial-scale trends in west Pacific warm pool hydrology since the Last Glacial Maximum

Nature volume 449, pages 452–455 (2007)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 04 June 2009

Abstract

Models and palaeoclimate data suggest that the tropical Pacific climate system plays a key part in the mechanisms underlying orbital-scale and abrupt climate change1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Atmospheric convection over the western tropical Pacific is a major source of heat and moisture to extratropical regions, and may therefore influence the global climate response to a variety of forcing factors. The response of tropical Pacific convection to changes in global climate boundary conditions, abrupt climate changes and radiative forcing remains uncertain, however. Here we present three absolutely dated oxygen isotope records from stalagmites in northern Borneo that reflect changes in west Pacific warm pool hydrology over the past 27,000 years. Our results suggest that convection over the western tropical Pacific weakened 18,000–20,000 years ago, as tropical Pacific2,5,6,8 and Antarctic9 temperatures began to rise during the early stages of deglaciation. Convective activity, as inferred from oxygen isotopes, reached a minimum during Heinrich event 1 (ref. 10), when the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was weak11, pointing to feedbacks between the strength of the overturning circulation and tropical Pacific hydrology. There is no evidence of the Younger Dryas event12 in the stalagmite records, however, suggesting that different mechanisms operated during these two abrupt deglacial climate events. During the Holocene epoch, convective activity appears to track changes in spring and autumn insolation, highlighting the sensitivity of tropical Pacific convection to external radiative forcing. Together, these findings demonstrate that the tropical Pacific hydrological cycle is sensitive to high-latitude climate processes in both hemispheres, as well as to external radiative forcing, and that it may have a central role in abrupt climate change events.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Map of the west Pacific December-January-February precipitation anomaly during the 1997–98 El Niño event.
Figure 2: Three absolutely dated stalagmite δ 18 O records from northern Borneo.
Figure 3: Comparison of the Borneo stalagmite δ 18 O records with other palaeoclimate records.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bush, A. B. G. & Philander, S. G. H. The role of ocean-atmosphere interactions in tropical cooling during the last glacial maximum. Science 279, 1341–1344 (1998)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Lea, D. W., Pak, D. K. & Spero, H. J. Climate impact of late quaternary equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature variations. Science 289, 1719–1724 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Clement, A. C., Cane, M. A. & Seager, R. An orbitally driven tropical source for abrupt climate change. J. Clim. 14, 2369–2375 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Koutavas, A., Lynch-Stieglitz, J., Marchitto, T. M. & Sachs, J. P. El Nino-like pattern in ice age tropical Pacific sea surface temperature. Science 297, 226–230 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Stott, L., Poulsen, C., Lund, S. & Thunell, R. Super ENSO and global climate oscillations at millennial time scales. Science 297, 222–226 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Rosenthal, Y., Oppo, D. W. & Linsley, B. K. The amplitude and phasing of climate change during the last deglaciation in the Sulu Sea, western equatorial Pacific. Geophys. Res. Lett. 30 doi: 10.1029/2002GL016612 (2003)

  7. Kienast, M. et al. Eastern Pacific cooling and Atlantic overturning circulation during the last deglaciation. Nature 443, 846–849 (2006)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Visser, K., Thunell, R. & Stott, L. Magnitude and timing of temperature change in the Indo-Pacific warm pool during deglaciation. Nature 421, 152–155 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. EPICA Community Members. One-to-one coupling of glacial climate variability in Greenland and Antarctica. Nature 444, 195–198 (2006)

  10. Hemming, S. R. Heinrich events: Massive late Pleistocene detritus layers of the North Atlantic and their global climate imprint. Rev. Geophys. 42 doi: 10.1029/2003RG000128 (2004)

  11. McManus, J. F., Francois, R., Gherardi, J. M., Keigwin, L. D. & Brown-Leger, S. Collapse and rapid resumption of Atlantic meridional circulation linked to deglacial climate changes. Nature 428, 834–837 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Rasmussen, S. O. et al. A new Greenland ice core chronology for the last glacial termination. J. Geophys. Res. 111 doi: 10.1029/2005JD006079 (2006)

  13. Peterson, L. C., Haug, G. H., Hughen, K. A. & Rohl, U. Rapid changes in the hydrologic cycle of the tropical Atlantic during the last glacial. Science 290, 1947–1951 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Chiang, J. C. H. & Bitz, C. M. Influence of high latitude ice cover on the marine Intertropical Convergence Zone. Clim. Dyn. 25, 477–496 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Zhang, R. & Delworth, T. L. Simulated tropical response to a substantial weakening of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. J. Clim. 18, 1853–1860 (2005)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Cobb, K. M., Adkins, J. F., Partin, J. W. & Clark, B. Regional-scale climate influences on temporal variations of rainwater and cave dripwater oxygen isotopes in northern Borneo. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. (in the press)

  17. Dansgaard, W. Stable isotopes in precipitation. Tellus 16, 436–468 (1964)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Rozanski, K., Araguas-Araguas, L. & Gonfiantini, R. in Climate Change in Continental Isotopic Records (eds Swart, P. K., Lohmann, K. C., McKenzie, J. & Savin, S.) 1–36 (Geophysical Monograph 78, American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, 1993)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Hendy, C. H. Isotopic geochemistry of speleothems. 1. Calculation of effects of different modes of formation on isotopic composition of speleothems and their applicability as palaeoclimatic indicators. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 35, 801–824 (1971)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Schrag, D. P. et al. The oxygen isotopic composition of seawater during the Last Glacial Maximum. Quat. Sci. Rev. 21, 331–342 (2002)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Steinke, S. et al. On the influence of sea level and monsoon climate on the southern South China Sea freshwater budget over the last 22,000 years. Quat. Sci. Rev. 25, 1475–1488 (2006)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Wang, Y. J. et al. A high-resolution absolute-dated Late Pleistocene monsoon record from Hulu Cave, China. Science 294, 2345–2348 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Kienast, M., Steinke, S., Stattegger, K. & Calvert, S. E. Synchronous tropical South China Sea SST change and Greenland warming during deglaciation. Science 291, 2132–2134 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Stott, L. et al. Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch. Nature 431, 56–59 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Haug, G. H., Hughen, K. A., Sigman, D. M., Peterson, L. C. & Rohl, U. Southward migration of the intertropical convergence zone through the Holocene. Science 293, 1304–1308 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Fleitmann, D. et al. Holocene forcing of the Indian monsoon recorded in a stalagmite from Southern Oman. Science 300, 1737–1739 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Wang, X. et al. Interhemispheric anti-phasing of rainfall during the last glacial period. Quat. Sci. Rev. 25, 3391–3403 (2006)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Clement, A. C., Seager, R. & Cane, M. A. Orbital controls on the El Nino/Southern Oscillation and the tropical climate. Paleoceanography 14, 441–456 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Chappellaz, J. et al. Changes in the atmospheric CH4 gradient between Greenland and Antarctica during the Holocene. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 102, 15987–15997 (1997)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Dlugokencky, E. J., Walter, B. P., Masarie, K. A., Lang, P. M. & Kasischke, E. S. Measurements of an anomalous global methane increase during 1998. Geophys. Res. Lett. 28, 499–502 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Xie, P. P. & Arkin, P. A. Global precipitation: A 17-year monthly analysis based on gauge observations, satellite estimates, and numerical model outputs. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 78, 2539–2558 (1997)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  32. Edwards, R. L., Chen, J. H., Ku, T. L. & Wasserburg, G. J. Precise timing of the last interglacial period from mass-spectrometric determination of Th-230 in corals. Science 236, 1547–1553 (1987)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Richards, D. A. & Dorale, J. A. in Uranium-Series Geochemistry (eds Bourdon, B., Henderson, G. M., Lundstrom, C. C. & Turner, S. P.) 407–460 (Reviews in Mineralogy & Geochemistry Vol. 52, Mineralogical Society of America, Chantilly, Virginia, 2003)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  34. Robinson, L. F., Henderson, G. M. & Slowey, N. C. U-Th dating of marine isotope stage 7 in Bahamas slope sediments. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 196, 175–187 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Edwards, R. L., Chen, J. H. & Wasserburg, G. J. 238U–234U–230Th–232Th systematics and the precise measurement of time over the past 500,000 years. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 81, 175–192 (1987)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank J. Malang, J. Gau and S. Clark of Gunung Mulu National Park and J. Baei Hassan of Logan Bunut National Park for field assistance. J. Despain, G. Prest, S. Fryer, J. Mosenfelder and B. Hacker provided field assistance during the 2003 field trip. A. A. Tuen (UNIMAS) greatly facilitated our 2006 fieldwork in Sarawak. We also thank D. Lund for assistance in U–Th dating, and J. Lynch-Stieglitz and M. Schmidt for providing comments on early versions of the manuscript. The research was funded by NSF-ESH and by a Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship.

The stalagmite δ18O data can be downloaded at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/partin2007/partin2007.html.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA,

    Judson W. Partin & Kim M. Cobb

  2. Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA,

    Jess F. Adkins & Diego P. Fernandez

  3. Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia

    Brian Clark

Authors
  1. Judson W. Partin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kim M. Cobb
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jess F. Adkins
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Brian Clark
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Diego P. Fernandez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Judson W. Partin.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

The file contains Supplementary Methods; Supplementary Figures S1-S10 with Legends and Supplementary Tables S1-S2. The supplementary information contains detailed data for the age model calculations. Included with the age models are multiple isochrons for each stalagmite used to determine initial 230Th/232Th ratios. Also included are Hendy test data for all three stalagmites. (PDF 3300 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Partin, J., Cobb, K., Adkins, J. et al. Millennial-scale trends in west Pacific warm pool hydrology since the Last Glacial Maximum. Nature 449, 452–455 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06164

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06164

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing