Organic Geochemical Reconstructions from Lake El'gygytgyn, Northeast Arctic Siberia, Constrain Arctic Temperature and Hydrologic Change Across the Pliocene-Pleistocene Transition

Abstract:

The Pliocene epoch (5-2.65 Ma) represents an analog for future climate conditions, with pCO₂ and continental configurations similar to present. Thus, understanding the climatic changes that occurred during the Pliocene might be useful for predicting how climate will involve in the future. In pursuit of this goal, reconstructions based on ocean sediments have proven useful, but also highlighted inconsistencies and gaps in our understanding of the climate mechanisms important during the Pliocene. For example, the conditions that drove ice growth and decay in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene, especially during a period known as the intensification of northern hemisphere glaciation, are debated. A major obstacle to refining our knowledge of such phenomena is the lack of paleoclimate records from terrestrial sites.

To address this shortcoming, we develop a record of climatic changes across the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition, spanning 2.82-2.41 million years ago (Ma), in a lacustrine record from Arctic Russia. Here we use branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) and the hydrogen isotopic composition of leaf waxes (n-alkane δD) to reconstruct temperature and hydrology during this interval. We find close coupling between the proxies from 2.55 – 2.41 Ma, suggesting glacial-interglacial temperature changes of 5-10ºC during this time in the Arctic. Prior to this, the proxies do not agree on the character of climate changes, suggesting a decoupling of temperature and the hydrologic cycle in the Arctic from 2.7-2.55 Ma. Shifts in the leaf wax hydrogen isotope record at 2.69 and 2.73 Ma, independent of changes in temperature, point to potentially dramatic changes in the high-latitude hydrological cycle at these times.

This record allows us, for the first time, to put discontinuous and time-uncertain records into regional perspective and better constrain the evolution of multiple independent Arctic feedback systems during the Pliocene and into the Pleistocene.