Stalagmite carbon isotopes suggest deglacial increase in soil respiration in western Europe driven by temperature change

Lechleitner, Franziska A.; Day, Christopher C.; Kost, Oliver; Wilhelm, Micah; Haghipour, Negar; Henderson, Gideon M.; Stoll, Heather M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1903-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1903-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Publications by EGU Medallists

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1903-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

24 Sep 2021

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 24 Sep 2021

Stalagmite carbon isotopes suggest deglacial increase in soil respiration in western Europe driven by temperature change

Franziska A. Lechleitner, Christopher C. Day, Oliver Kost, Micah Wilhelm, Negar Haghipour, Gideon M. Henderson, and Heather M. Stoll

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1903-2021-supplement

Data sets

flechleitner/Spain_analysis: (v1.0) Franziska Lechleitner and Micah Wilhelm https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5503041

Model code and software

flechleitner/DCF_calculator: (v1.0) Franziska Lechleitner https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5503025

Short summary

Soil respiration is a critical but poorly constrained component of the global carbon cycle. We analyse the effect of changing soil respiration rates on the stable carbon isotope ratio of speleothems from northern Spain covering the last deglaciation. Using geochemical analysis and forward modelling we quantify the processes affecting speleothem stable carbon isotope ratios and extract a signature of increasing soil respiration synchronous with deglacial warming.