Bi-polar ocean linkages: evidence from late-Holocene Antarctic marine and Greenland ice-core records

A continuous, C-14 dated palaeoenvironmental (4000-year) proxy from the Antarctic Peninsula glacial marine record demonstrates pronounced cycles of elevated palaeoproductivity (warm events) that recur every similar to 200 years. Superimposed upon this are longer-term reductions in palaeoproductivity (cooling events) that correspond with the 'Little Ice Age' and an event at similar to 2500 radiocarbon years BP. Comparison of the Antarctic marine record with that obtained from the GISP2 ice-core record (Greenland Ice Sheet) demonstrates some agreement at both millennial and multicentury frequencies. We correlate a pronounced 'Little Ice Age' event and six warm intervals within the preceding 2000 years. Before this time the correlation is less coherent, in part, because of diagenetic changes in the marine sediment core and uncertainty in correcting radiocarbon ages from Antarctica. Correct phasing of the events hinges on a calibration fur Antarctic radiocarbon ages. These data illustrate a common linkage between palaeoclimate for the North Atlantic and maritime (Pacific) Antarctic during the late Holocene and suggest that linkages between the two systems may he brst examined by a Focus on the Drake Passage and associated marginal basins.