0000000000316094
AUTHOR
Bo Møllesøe Vinther
Interannual variability of Greenland winter precipitation sources: 2. Effects of North Atlantic Oscillation variability on stable isotopes in precipitation
[1] A new Lagrangian moisture source diagnostic is applied to identify the atmospheric conditions relevant for the fractionation of stable water isotopes during evaporation over the ocean and subsequent transport to Greenland. Northern Hemisphere winter months with positive and negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index are studied on the basis of ERA-40 reanalysis data. Diagnosed moisture transport conditions are supplied to a Rayleigh-type isotope fractionation model to derive estimates for the isotopic composition of stable isotopes in winter precipitation on the Greenland plateau for the two NAO phases. Because of changes in atmospheric circulation, moisture source locations for pr…
Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia
Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructi…