Early onset and origin of 100-kyr cycles in Pleistocene tropical SST records

Abstract

The large 100-kyr cycles evident in most late-Pleistocene (0-0.6 Ma) paleoclimatic records still lack a satisfactory explanation. Previous studies of the nature of the transition from the early Pleistocene (1.2-1.8 Ma) 41-kyr-dominated climate regime to the 100-kyr world have been based almost exclusively on benthic foraminiferal oxygen isotopic (δ18O) data. It is generally accepted that the late Pleistocene 100-kyr cycles represent a newly evolved sensitivity to eccentricity/precession, superimposed on an earlier, and largely constant, response to obliquity and precession forcing. However, orbitally-resolved Pleistocene sea surface temperature (SST) records from a variety of oceanic regions paint a rather different picture of the global climate transition across the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT, 0.6-1.2 Ma). Reanalysis of these SST records shows that: (1) an early onset of strong 100-kyr-like cycles in two low-frequency bands (∼ 120-145 kyr and ∼ 60-80 kyr), derived from the bundling of two/three obliquity cycles into grand cycles (obliquity subharmonics), occurred in tropical SST records during the early Pleistocene, (2) these two early Pleistocene periods converge into the late-Pleistocene 100-kyr period in tropical SST records, (3) the dominance of 100-kyr SST power in the late Pleistocene coincides with a dramatic decline in the 41-kyr SST power, and (4) the correlation of timing of glacial terminations with eccentricity/precession variation could well extend back into the early Pleistocene. We demonstrate that most of these features also occur in δ18O records, but in a much more subtle manner. These features could be explained in two plausible ways: a shift in climate sensitivity from obliquity to eccentricity/precession (a modified version of the conventional view) or an increasingly nonlinear response to orbital obliquity across the MPT. However, our examination of the development of ∼100-kyr cycles favors an obliquity bundling mechanism to form late Pleistocene 100-kyr cycles. We therefore suggest that the late Pleistocene 100-kyr climatic cycles are likely a nonlinear response to orbital obliquity, although the timing of late Pleistocene 100-kyr climatic cycles and their early forms appears to be paced by eccentricity/precession. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.