Noble Gases Record Widespread Six Degrees Celsius Low-Latitude Land
Cooling During the Last Glacial Maximum
Abstract
Estimates of climate sensitivity rely in part on the magnitude of global
cooling during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). While ice cores provide
reliable LGM temperatures in high-latitude regions, proxy records of
sea-surface temperature (SST) disagree substantially in the low
latitudes (1-3), and quantitative low-elevation paleotemperature records
on land are scarce. Filling this gap, noble gases in groundwater record
land surface temperatures via their temperature-dependent solubility in
water (4), a direct physical relationship uncomplicated by biological
and chemical processes (5-6). Individual groundwater noble gas studies
(e.g. 7-8) have shown 5-7 °C LGM cooling, in line with some proxy data
(e.g. tropical snowline reconstructions) but larger than notable
low-latitude SST reconstructions considering land-sea cooling ratios. To
date, limited spatial coverage and the use of different physical
frameworks to determine temperature from noble gas data has prevented a
comprehensive estimate of low-latitude LGM cooling from noble gases in
groundwater. Here we compile four decades of groundwater noble gas data
from six continents, all interpreted using a consistent physical
framework (9). We evaluate the accuracy of the “noble gas
paleothermometer” by comparing noble gas derived temperatures in late
Holocene groundwater with modern observations. From LGM noble gas data,
we find that the low-elevation, low-to-mid-latitude land surface cooled
by 5.8 ± 0.6 °C during the LGM (9). The ratio of our land cooling
estimate to a recent SST reconstruction (1) that found 4.0 °C cooling
over the same low latitude band is consistent with the inter-model mean
land-sea cooling ratio of 1.45 °C from PMIP4 simulations (10). Together,
these recent land- and sea-surface LGM temperature reconstructions
indicate greater low-latitude cooling and thus climate sensitivity than
prior studies, with implications for projections of future climate. 1)
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Stute et al. (1995). Science. 8) Weyhenmeyer et al. (2000).
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