32 Organic Geochemistry in the Geosciences

Tuesday, 22 March 2016
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Meeting Room 5

BIOMARKER BASED PALEOTEMPERATURES FROM AN ARCTIC SUPER INTERGLACIAL: MARINE ISOTOPE STAGES 33-31 AT LAKE EL'GYGYTGYN

Paper number: 32-10
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 11:00 AM – 11:20 AM

Authors

Abstract

Previous periods of extreme warmth in Earth’s history are of great interest in light of current and predicted anthropogenic warming. Numerous so called “super interglacial” intervals, with summer temperatures significantly warmer than today, have been identified in the 3.6 million year (Ma) sediment record from Lake El’gygytgyn, northeast Russia. To date, however, a high-resolution paleotemperature reconstruction from any of these super interglacials is lacking. Here we present a paleotemperature reconstruction based on branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) from Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 35 to MIS 29, including super interglacial MIS 31. To investigate this period in detail, samples were analyzed with an unprecedented average sample resolution of ~500 yrs from MIS 33-30. Our results suggest the entire period currently defined as MIS 33-31 (~1114-1062 kyr BP) was characterized by generally warm and highly variable conditions at the lake, at times out of phase with Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, and that cold “glacial” conditions during MIS 32 lasted only a few thousand years. Close similarities are seen with coeval records from high southern latitudes, supporting the suggestion that the interval from MIS 33 to MIS 31 was an exceptionally long interglacial (Teitler et al., 2015). Based on brGDGT temperatures from Lake El’gygytgyn (this study and unpublished results), warming in the western Arctic during MIS 31 was matched only by MIS 11 during the Pleistocene.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 48, No. 1

doi: 10.1130/abs/2016NE-272345

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