Lags within the Younger Dryas

摘要

An abrupt cooling event, the Younger Dryas, interrupted the warming after the end of the last glacial period. The cool interlude, approximately 12,800 years ago, was triggered by a slowdown of the overturning circulation in the North Atlantic, and can be identified in climate reconstructions across the Northern Hemisphere1 and parts of the Southern Hemisphere2. In Europe, the Younger Dryas was accompanied by substantial shifts in vegetation3, as well as a drop in temperature. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Rach and colleagues4 demonstrate that in western Europe, the vegetation change was caused by a shift in the hydrologic cycle, which was probably related to the build-up of sea ice in the northern Atlantic Ocean.