Edited by Mark H. Thiemens, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, and approved October 26, 2017 (received for review July 15, 2017)
Atmospheric dust is a major component of climate change. However, the relationship between glacial continental dust activity and abrupt centennial–millennial-scale climate changes of the North Atlantic is poorly known. Recent advances in high-precision radiocarbon dating of small gastropods in continental loess deposits provide an opportunity to gain unprecedented insights into dust variations and its major drivers at centennial–millennial scales from a near-source dust archive. Here, we show that Late Quaternary North Atlantic temperature and dustiness in Greenland and Europe were largely synchronous and suggest that this coupling was driven via precipitation changes and large-scale atmospheric circulation.
Centennial-scale mineral dust peaks in last glacial Greenland ice cores match the timing of lowest Greenland temperatures, yet little is known of equivalent changes in dust-emitting regions, limiting our understanding of dust−climate interaction. Here, we present the most detailed and precise age model for European loess dust deposits to date, based on 125 accelerator mass spectrometry 14C ages from Dunaszekcső, Hungary. The record shows that variations in glacial dust deposition variability on centennial–millennial timescales in east central Europe and Greenland were synchronous within uncertainty. We suggest that precipitation and atmospheric circulation changes were likely the major influences on European glacial dust activity and propose that European dust emissions were modulated by dominant phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation, which had a major influence on vegetation and local climate of European dust source regions.
Author contributions: G.Ú. designed research; G.Ú. performed research; M.M., A.D., A.J.T.J., and J.K. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; G.Ú., M.M., A.D., G.V., A.J.T.J., B.P.-G., J.-P.B., and J.K. analyzed data; and G.Ú., T.S., and F.L. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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