Sequence of events from the onset to the demise of the Last Interglacial: Evaluating strengths and limitations of chronologies used in climatic archives

Aline Govin (1, 2, 3) , Émilie Capron (4) , P. C. Tzedakis (5) , Sophie Verheyden (6, 7) , Bassam Ghaleb (8) , Claude Hillaire-Marcel (8) , Guillaume St-Onge (9) , Joseph S. Stoner (10) , Franck Bassinot (2, 11) , Lucie Bazin (2) , Thomas Blunier (12) , N Combourieu-Nebout (13) , Anuar El Ouahabi (14) , Dominique Genty (2, 15) , Rainer Gersonde (16) , Patricia Jimenez-Amat (17) , Amaëlle Landais (2, 15) , Belen Martrat (14) , Valérie Masson-Delmotte (2, 15) , Frédéric Parrenin (18, 19) , Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz (20) , Daniel Veres (18) , C Waelbroeck (2, 11) , Rainer Zahn (21)

1 MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences [Bremen]
2 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
3 CLIMAG - Climat et Magnétisme
4 BAS - British Antarctic Survey
5 Department of Geography
6 IRSNB - Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique
7 VUB - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
8 GEOTOP - Centre de recherche sur la dynamique du système Terre
9 ISMER - Institut des Sciences de la MER de Rimouski
10 CEOAS - College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences [Corvallis]
11 PALEOCEAN - Paléocéanographie
12 Centre for Ice and Climate [Copenhagen]
13 HNHP - Histoire naturelle de l'Homme préhistorique
14 IDAEA - Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research
15 GLACCIOS - Glaces et Continents, Climats et Isotopes Stables
16 Department of Bentho-pelagic processes
17 UAB - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
18 LGGE - Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement
19 UGA [2016-2019] - Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019]
20 Aarhus University [Aarhus]
21 ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats

The Last Interglacial (LIG) represents an invaluable case study to investigate the response of components of the Earth system to global warming. However, the scarcity of absolute age constraints in most archives leads to extensive use of various stratigraphic alignments to different reference chronologies. This feature sets limitations to the accuracy of the stratigraphic assignment of the climatic sequence of events across the globe during the LIG. Here, we review the strengths and limitations of the methods that are commonly used to date or develop chronologies in various climatic archives for the time span (∼140–100 ka) encompassing the penultimate deglaciation, the LIG and the glacial inception. Climatic hypotheses underlying record alignment strategies and the interpretation of tracers are explicitly described. Quantitative estimates of the associated absolute and relative age uncertainties are provided.Recommendations are subsequently formulated on how best to define absolute and relative chronologies. Future climato-stratigraphic alignments should provide (1) a clear statement of climate hypotheses involved, (2) a detailed understanding of environmental parameters controlling selected tracers and (3) a careful evaluation of the synchronicity of aligned paleoclimatic records. We underscore the need to (1) systematically report quantitative estimates of relative and absolute age uncertainties, (2) assess the coherence of chronologies when comparing different records, and (3) integrate these uncertainties in paleoclimatic interpretations and comparisons with climate simulations.Finally, we provide a sequence of major climatic events with associated age uncertainties for the period 140–105 ka, which should serve as a new benchmark to disentangle mechanisms of the Earth system's response to orbital forcing and evaluate transient climate simulations.

Keywords: Last Interglacial; Penultimate deglaciation; Last glacial inception; Chronology; Corals; Speleothems; Ice cores; Marine sediments; Peat and lake sediments; Climate dynamics

Domains: Environmental Sciences

Aline Govin, Émilie Capron, P. C. Tzedakis, Sophie Verheyden, Bassam Ghaleb, et al.. Sequence of events from the onset to the demise of the Last Interglacial: Evaluating strengths and limitations of chronologies used in climatic archives. Quaternary Science Reviews, 2015, 129, pp.1-36. ⟨10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.09.018⟩. ⟨insu-01323547⟩