Using Clumped Isotopes to Investigate the Causes of Pluvial Conditions in the Southeastern Basin and Range during the Last Deglaciation

Abstract:

The last deglacial interval (~19-11 ka) was marked by major perturbations to Earth’s climate coupled with rising atmospheric temperatures and CO₂ concentrations, reaching near-modern levels by the early Holocene. Several discharges of freshwater into the North Atlantic caused by melting and collapse of continental ice sheets affected ocean circulation and sea-surface temperatures, triggering abrupt changes in terrestrial climate worldwide. While the timing and amount of associated temperature changes have been quantified from ice core records at high latitudes, corresponding information from lower latitudes is comparatively low and concentrated along coastlines, at high elevations, and in tropical and mesic regions. This is problematic for efforts to improve the reliability of long-term climate forecasts, reliant on models lacking sufficient validation from paleoclimate reconstructions for interior drylands that comprise nearly half of Earth’s land surface.

Evidence for past hydrologic changes in arid regions comes from ancient lake-shoreline deposits in internally drained basins, allowing quantitative comparison of the recorded effective moisture increases. However, the utility of these records depends on our relatively limited ability to deconvolve the contributions of temperature and precipitation to these changes. Here we explore the possible role of the summer monsoon in causing deglacial-age highstands in the southern Basin and Range. We employ clumped isotope analysis to generate paleotemperature and surface-water d¹⁸O estimates from carbonates in fossil shoreline and wetland deposits for comparison to output from PMIP3 coupled climate models and the model ensemble. Additionally, we present higher resolution output from LMDZ, the atmosphere-only component of the IPSL coupled model, employing LGM boundary conditions along with a hosing experiment designed to simulate Heinrich 1. For all simulations, we present analysis of changes in moisture transport, precipitation, evaporation, and resulting water isotopes.