On the Stochastic Nature of the Rapid Climate Shifts during the Last Ice Age

Abstract The rapid climate shifts observed in the glacial climate are analyzed. The transitions into the warm interstadial states, the onsets, are easily identifiable in the record. The distribution of waiting times between consecutive onsets is well fitted, assuming that the remaining residence time in each state is independent of the past. This implies that it has a simple no-memory exponential waiting time distribution, but with the mean waiting time depending on the climate state. The mean waiting time from one onset to the next is around 2400 yr. The most likely (maximum likelihood) distribution derived solely from the onset sequence is rather insensitive to the mean waiting time in the warm interstadials in the range of 400–1200 yr. When extending the analysis to include the transitions from the warm interstadials to the cold stadials observed with a larger uncertainty, the distributions in the two states are well fitted to exponential distributions, with mean waiting times of around 800 yr in the w...

[1]  Katrine K Andersen,et al.  The DO-climate events are probably noise induced: statistical investigation of the claimed 1470 years cycle , 2006 .

[2]  C. Wunsch.  Abrupt climate change: An alternative view , 2006, Quaternary Research.

[3]  S. Rahmstorf,et al.  Possible solar origin of the 1,470-year glacial climate cycle demonstrated in a coupled model , 2005, Nature.

[4]  P. Ditlevsen,et al.  The Recurrence Time of Dansgaard–Oeschger Events and Limits on the Possible Periodic Component , 2005, nlin/0505031.

[5]  E. Tziperman,et al.  Sea-ice switches and abrupt climate change , 2003, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[6]  M. Schulz.  On the 1470‐year pacing of Dansgaard‐Oeschger warm events , 2002 .

[7]  Andreas Schmittner,et al.  Instability of Glacial Climate in a Model of the Ocean- Atmosphere-Cryosphere System , 2002, Science.

[8]  R. Haarsma,et al.  Rapid transitions and ultra-low frequency behaviour in a 40 kyr integration with a coupled climate model of intermediate complexity , 2001 .

[9]  R. Alley,et al.  Stochastic resonance in the North Atlantic , 2001 .

[10]  P. Ditlevsen,et al.  Observation of α‐stable noise induced millennial climate changes from an ice‐core record , 1999 .

[11]  Paola Cessi,et al.  A Simple Box Model of Stochastically Forced Thermohaline Flow , 1994 .

[12]  D. Macayeal.  Binge/purge oscillations of the Laurentide Ice Sheet as a cause of the North Atlantic's Heinrich events , 1993 .

[13]  J. Jouzel,et al.  Evidence for general instability of past climate from a 250-kyr ice-core record , 1993, Nature.

[14]  Andrew J. Weaver,et al.  Freshwater flux forcing of decadal and interdecadal oceanic variability , 1991, Nature.

[15]  M. Loutre,et al.  Equatorial insolation: from precession harmonics to eccentricity frequencies , 2006 .

[16]  Susanne Ditlevsen,et al.  The fast climate fluctuations during the stadial and interstadial climate states , 2002, Annals of Glaciology.

[17]  P. R. Fisk,et al.  Distributions in Statistics: Continuous Multivariate Distributions , 1971 .