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Despite decades of research, the roles of climate and humans in driving the dramatic extinctions of large-bodied mammals during the Late Quaternary period remain contentious. Here we use ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record to elucidate how climate and humans shaped the demographic history of woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison and musk ox. We show that climate has been a major driver of population change over the past 50,000 years. However, each species responds differently to the effects of climatic shifts, habitat redistribution and human encroachment. Although climate change alone can explain the extinction of some species, such as Eurasian musk ox and woolly rhinoceros, a combination of climatic and anthropogenic effects appears to be responsible for the extinction of others, including Eurasian steppe bison and wild horse. We find no genetic signature or any distinctive range dynamics distinguishing extinct from surviving species, emphasizing the challenges associated with predicting future responses of extant mammals to climate and human-mediated habitat change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) transports warm salty surface waters to high latitudes, where they cool, sink and return southwards at depth. Through its attendant meridional heat transport, the AMOC helps maintain a warm northwestern European climate, and acts as a control on the global climate. Past climate fluctuations during the Holocene epoch (∼11,700 years ago to the present) have been linked with changes in North Atlantic Ocean circulation. The behaviour of the surface flowing salty water that helped drive overturning during past climatic changes is, however, not well known. Here we investigate the temperature and salinity changes of a substantial surface inflow to a region of deep-water formation throughout the Holocene. We find that the inflow has undergone millennial-scale variations in temperature and salinity (∼3.5 °C and ∼1.5 practical salinity units, respectively) most probably controlled by subpolar gyre dynamics. The temperature and salinity variations correlate with previously reported periods of rapid climate change. The inflow becomes more saline during enhanced freshwater flux to the subpolar North Atlantic. Model studies predict a weakening of AMOC in response to enhanced Arctic freshwater fluxes, although the inflow can compensate on decadal timescales by becoming more saline. Our data suggest that such a negative feedback mechanism may have operated during past intervals of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models and palaeoclimate data suggest that the tropical Pacific climate system plays a key part in the mechanisms underlying orbital-scale and abrupt climate change. Atmospheric convection over the western tropical Pacific is a major source of heat and moisture to extratropical regions, and may therefore influence the global climate response to a variety of forcing factors. The response of tropical Pacific convection to changes in global climate boundary conditions, abrupt climate changes and radiative forcing remains uncertain, however. Here we present three absolutely dated oxygen isotope records from stalagmites in northern Borneo that reflect changes in west Pacific warm pool hydrology over the past 27,000 years. Our results suggest that convection over the western tropical Pacific weakened 18,000–20,000 years ago, as tropical Pacific and Antarctic temperatures began to rise during the early stages of deglaciation. Convective activity, as inferred from oxygen isotopes, reached a minimum during Heinrich event 1 (ref. 10), when the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was weak, pointing to feedbacks between the strength of the overturning circulation and tropical Pacific hydrology. There is no evidence of the Younger Dryas event in the stalagmite records, however, suggesting that different mechanisms operated during these two abrupt deglacial climate events. During the Holocene epoch, convective activity appears to track changes in spring and autumn insolation, highlighting the sensitivity of tropical Pacific convection to external radiative forcing. Together, these findings demonstrate that the tropical Pacific hydrological cycle is sensitive to high-latitude climate processes in both hemispheres, as well as to external radiative forcing, and that it may have a central role in abrupt climate change events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)—an oscillatory mode of coupled ocean–atmosphere variability—causes climatic extremes and socio-economic hardship throughout the tropical Indian Ocean region. There is much debate about how the IOD interacts with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Asian monsoon, and recent changes in the historic ENSO–monsoon relationship raise the possibility that the properties of the IOD may also be evolving. Improving our understanding of IOD events and their climatic impacts thus requires the development of records defining IOD activity in different climatic settings, including prehistoric times when ENSO and the Asian monsoon behaved differently from the present day. Here we use coral geochemical records from the equatorial eastern Indian Ocean to reconstruct surface-ocean cooling and drought during individual IOD events over the past ∼6,500 years. We find that IOD events during the middle Holocene were characterized by a longer duration of strong surface ocean cooling, together with droughts that peaked later than those expected by El Niño forcing alone. Climate model simulations suggest that this enhanced cooling and drying was the result of strong cross-equatorial winds driven by the strengthened Asian monsoon of the middle Holocene. These IOD–monsoon connections imply that the socioeconomic impacts of projected future changes in Asian monsoon strength may extend throughout Australasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precise knowledge of the phase relationship between climate changes in the two hemispheres is a key for understanding the Earth’s climate dynamics. For the last glacial period, ice core studies have revealed strong coupling of the largest millennial-scale warm events in Antarctica with the longest Dansgaard–Oeschger events in Greenland through the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. It has been unclear, however, whether the shorter Dansgaard–Oeschger events have counterparts in the shorter and less prominent Antarctic temperature variations, and whether these events are linked by the same mechanism. Here we present a glacial climate record derived from an ice core from Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, which represents South Atlantic climate at a resolution comparable with the Greenland ice core records. After methane synchronization with an ice core from North Greenland, the oxygen isotope record from the Dronning Maud Land ice core shows a one-to-one coupling between all Antarctic warm events and Greenland Dansgaard–Oeschger events by the bipolar seesaw6. The amplitude of the Antarctic warm events is found to be linearly dependent on the duration of the concurrent stadial in the North, suggesting that they all result from a similar reduction in the meridional overturning circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stability of the Antarctic ice shelves in a warming climate has long been discussed, and the recent collapse of a significant part, over 12,500 km2 in area, of the Larsen ice shelf off the Antarctic Peninsula has led to a refocus toward the implications of ice shelf decay for the stability of Antarctica's grounded ice. Some smaller Antarctic ice shelves have undergone periodic growth and decay over the past 11,000 yr (refs 7–11), but these ice shelves are at the climatic limit of ice shelf viability and are therefore expected to respond rapidly to natural climate variability at century to millennial scales. Here we use records of diatoms, detrital material and geochemical parameters from six marine sediment cores in the vicinity of the Larsen ice shelf to demonstrate that the recent collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf is unprecedented during the Holocene. We infer from our oxygen isotope measurements in planktonic foraminifera that the Larsen B ice shelf has been thinning throughout the Holocene, and we suggest that the recent prolonged period of warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region, in combination with the long-term thinning, has led to collapse of the ice shelf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study on abrupt changes in North American climate during early Holocene times. Analysis of varved sediments from Deep Lake in Minnesota; Trends in the stable oxygen-isotope composition of the sedimentary carbonate indicating a pronounced climate cooling, which is characterized by increased outbreaks of polar air, decreased precipitation temperatures, and a higher fraction of the annual precipitation falling as snow; Cause of this abrupt climate reversal.

Investigates the role of deep oceanic water mass flow on millennial-scale variability of Holocene climate. Sediment data from the Iceland basin on the influence of the Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water (ISOW); Periodicity of 1,500 years; Other periodic Holocene climate variations.

The article discusses the study by A. Shevenell and colleagues on the air-sea-ice interactions in Antarctica and its relation to climate change. It says that the western Antarctic Peninsula warms five times faster during the 20th century, which is visible in the disintegration of ice shelves. Meanwhile, the study provides a record of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of the western Antarctic Peninsula for the Holocene epoch, whereas shows a cooling trend.

The article focuses on the use of palaeoclimatic data by scientists to enhance their climatic models. It mentions the temperate mid-Holocene epoch which is included in the World Climate Research Programme's Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which will be the basis of the fifth assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013. Palaeoclimate modeller Masa Kageyama explains why it is crucial to check the ability of climate models to simulate a different climate.