New estimation of critical insolation – CO₂ relationship for triggering glacial inception

Abstract. It has been previously proposed that glacial inception represents a bifurcation transition between interglacial and glacial states, and is governed by the non-linear dynamics of the climate-cryosphere system. To trigger glacial inception, the orbital forcing (defined as the maximum of summer insolation at 65° N and determined by Earth’s orbital parameters) must be lower than a critical level, which depends on the atmospheric CO₂ concentration. While paleoclimatic data do not provide a strong constraint on the dependence between CO₂ and critical insolation, its accurate estimation is of fundamental importance for predicting future glaciations and the effect that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions might have on them.

In this study, we use the novel Earth system model of intermediate complexity CLIMBER-X with interactive ice sheets to produce a new estimation of the critical insolation – CO₂ relationship for triggering glacial inception. We perform a series of experiments in which different combinations of orbital forcing and atmospheric CO₂ concentration are maintained constant in time. We analyse for which combinations of orbital forcing and CO₂ glacial inception occurs and trace the critical relationship between them, separating conditions under which glacial inception is possible from those where glacial inception is not materialised. We also provide a theoretical foundation for the proposed critical insolation – CO₂ relation.

We find that the use of the maximum summer insolation at 65° N as a single metric for orbital forcing is adequate for tracing the glacial inception bifurcation. Moreover, we find that the temporal and spatial patterns of ice sheet growth during glacial inception are not always the same but depend on the critical insolation and CO₂ level. The experiments evidence that during glacial inception, ice sheets grow mostly in North America, and only under low CO₂ conditions ice sheets are also formed over Scandinavia. The latter is associated with a weak Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) for low CO₂. We find that the strength of AMOC also affects the rate of ice sheet growth during glacial inception.