A new set of long-term climate records based on cave stalagmites collected from tropical Borneo shows that the western tropical Pacific responded very differently than other regions of the globe to abrupt climate change events. The 100,000-year climate record adds to data on past climate events, and may help scientists assess models designed to predict how the Earth's climate will respond in the future. The new record resulted from oxygen isotope analysis of more than 1,700 calcium carbonate samples taken from four stalagmites found in three different northern Borneo caves. The results suggest that climate feedbacks within the tropical regions may amplify and prolong abrupt climate change events that were first discovered in the North Atlantic.
A new set of long-term climate records based on cave stalagmites collected from tropical Borneo shows that the western tropical Pacific responded very differently than other regions of the globe to abrupt climate change events. The 100,000-year climate record adds to data on past climate events, and may help scientists assess models designed to predict how the Earth's climate will respond in the future. The new record resulted from oxygen isotope analysis of more than 1,700 calcium carbonate samples taken from four stalagmites found in three different northern Borneo caves. The results suggest that climate feedbacks within the tropical regions may amplify and prolong abrupt climate change events that were first discovered in the North Atlantic.
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Stalagmite is a type of speleothem that rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions and the deposition of calcium carbonate . This stalagmite formation occurs only under certain pH conditions within the underground cavern. The corresponding formation on the ceiling of a cave is known as a stalacite. If these formations grow together, the result is known as a column.
Today, relatively subtle changes in the tropical Pacific ocean and atmosphere have profound effects on global climate. However, there are few records of past climate changes in this key region that have the length, resolution and age controls needed to reveal the area's response to abrupt climate change events.
"This is a new record from a very important area of the world," said Kim Cobb, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "This record will provide a new piece of the puzzle from the tropical Pacific showing us how that climate system has responded to forcing events over the past 100,000 years." The researchers were also surprised to discover a very large and abrupt signal in their stalagmite climate records precisely when super-volcano Toba erupted nearby, roughly 74,000 years ago.
The team recovered the stalagmites from caves in Gunung Mulu and Gunung Buda National Parks, in northern Borneo, which is located a few degrees north of the Equator in the western Pacific. Back at their Georgia Tech lab, they analyzed the stalagmites for the ratio of oxygen isotopes contained in samples of calcium carbonate, the material from which the stalagmites were formed. That ratio is set by the oxygen isotopes in rainfall at the site, as the water that seeped into the ground dissolved limestone rock and dripped into the caves to form the stalagmites. The stalagmites accumulate at a rate of roughly one centimeter every thousand years.
"Stalagmites are time capsules of climate signals from thousands of years in the past," said Stacy Carolin, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate who gathered and analyzed the stalagmites. "We have instrumental records of climate only for the past 100 years or so, and if we want to look deeper into the past, we have to find records like these that locked in climate signals we can extract today."
Rainfall oxygen isotopic ratios are good indicators of the amount of rainfall occurring throughout the region, as determined by a modern-day calibration study recently published by another graduate student in Cobb's lab.Merging data from the four different stalagmites provided a record of precipitation trends in the western Pacific over the past 100,000 years. That information can be compared to stalagmite and ice core climate records obtained elsewhere in the world. Climate scientists are interested in learning more about abrupt climate changes because they indicate that the climate system may have tipping points. So far, the climate system has responded to rising carbon dioxide levels at a fairly steady rate, but many scientists worry about possible nonlinear effects.
"As a society, we haven't really thought enough about the fact that we are moving Earth's climate system toward a new state very quickly," said Cobb. "It's important to remember that the climate system has important nonlinearities that are most evident in these abrupt climate events. Ultimately, we'd like to be able to reproduce the global signatures of these abrupt climate events with numerical models of the climate system, and investigate the physics that drive such events."
For further information see Staglamite and Climate.
Cobweb Cave in Gunung Mulu National Park image by Kim Cobb.
