Assessment of the southern polar and subpolar warming in the PMIP4 last interglacial simulations using paleoclimate data syntheses

Gao, Qinggang; Capron, Emilie; Sime, Louise C.; Rhodes, Rachael H.; Sivankutty, Rahul; Zhang, Xu; Otto-Bliesner, Bette L.; Werner, Martin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-419-2025

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-419-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-419-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

Research article

|

07 Feb 2025

Research article |

| 07 Feb 2025

Assessment of the southern polar and subpolar warming in the PMIP4 last interglacial simulations using paleoclimate data syntheses

Qinggang Gao, Emilie Capron, Louise C. Sime, Rachael H. Rhodes, Rahul Sivankutty, Xu Zhang, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, and Martin Werner

Data sets

The four paleoclimate data syntheses for the article "Assessment of the southern polar and subpolar warming in the PMIP4 Last Interglacial simulations using paleoclimate data syntheses'' Qinggang Gao et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11079974

MIS 5e Southern Ocean September sea-ice concentrations and summer sea-surface temperatures reconstructed from marine sediment cores using a MAT diatom transfer function M. Chadwick et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.936573

Last interglacial and penultimate glacial sea surface temperature anomalies for the region south of 40° S, resampled to 2000 year resolution D. M. Chandler and P. M. Langebroek https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.938620

Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/) N. A. Rayner et al. https://doi.org/10.1029/2002JD002670

Short summary

Marine sediment and ice core records suggest a warmer Southern Ocean and Antarctica at the early last interglacial, ~127 000 years ago. However, when only forced by orbital parameters and greenhouse gas concentrations during that period, state-of-the-art climate models do not reproduce the magnitude of warming. Here we show that much of the warming at southern middle to high latitudes can be reproduced by a UK climate model, HadCM3, with a 3000-year freshwater forcing over the North Atlantic.