title: Rapid coupling between ice volume and polar temperature over the past 150,000 years.
abstract: Current global warming necessitates a detailed understanding of the relationships between climate and global ice volume. Highly resolved and continuous sea-level records are essential for quantifying ice-volume changes. However, an unbiased study of the timing of past ice-volume changes, relative to polar climate change, has so far been impossible because available sea-level records either were dated by using orbital tuning or ice-core timescales, or were discontinuous in time. Here we present an independent dating of a continuous, high-resolution sea-level record in millennial-scale detail throughout the past 150,000 years. We find that the timing of ice-volume fluctuations agrees well with that of variations in Antarctic climate and especially Greenland climate. Amplitudes of ice-volume fluctuations more closely match Antarctic (rather than Greenland) climate changes. Polar climate and ice-volume changes, and their rates of change, are found to covary within centennial response times. Finally, rates of sea-level rise reached at least 1.2 m per century during all major episodes of ice-volume reduction.
authors.affiliation: School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK.
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Grant
authors.forename: E J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Rohling
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bar-Matthews
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ayalon
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Medina-Elizalde
authors.forename: C Bronk
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Ramsey
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Satow
authors.forename: A P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Roberts
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000864:Antarctic Regions; D037421:Anthozoa; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change / Q000266:history* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005246:Feedback; D056908:Foraminifera / Q000302:isolation & purification; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000032:analysis; D006116:Greenland; D049690:History, Ancient; D046448:Ice Cover / Q000737:chemistry; D019156:Indian Ocean; D008522:Mediterranean Sea; D010933:Plankton / Q000302:isolation & purification; D012623:Seawater / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry; D013696:Temperature; D013997:Time Factors