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Published on: October 26, 2019
Protracted ocean circulation slowdown drove exceptional ice-sheet melting during ice age termination IV
Hsun-Ming Hu1,2, Gianluca Marino3, María Fernanda Sánchez Goñi4
1State Key Laboratory of Loess Science, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, . hsunming.hu@gmail.com.
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Glacial terminations stand out for their high rates of sea-level rise, particularly during meltwater pulses. Termination IV (T-IV; ~340,000 years before present) is a prominent example, with sea level rising at up to ~5 m per century. Due to sparse absolute age constraints on marine records, the causes for the high rates of sea-level rise at T-IV remain elusive. In this work, we provide a speleothem chronology from northern Italy, which we transpose to North Atlantic marine records. We infer that the high T-IV sea-level rise rate likely relates to a feedback whereby protracted meltwater release caused enhanced ocean heat storage, followed by heat release upon circulation recovery, driving additional ice-sheet collapse. This analysis highlights the critical role of oceanic feedbacks in driving exceptional rates of sea-level rise during terminations.
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