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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS,
VOL. 31,
L06203,
5 PP., 2004
doi:10.1029/2003GL019140
A late medieval warm period in the Southern Ocean as a delayed response to external forcing?
Institut d'Astronomie et de Géophysique G. Lemaître, UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, IPSL, UMR CEA-CNRS, L'Orme des Merisiers, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, IPSL, UMR CEA-CNRS, L'Orme des Merisiers, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Institut d'Astronomie et de Géophysique G. Lemaître, UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Department of the Environment and Heritage, Australian Antarctic Division, and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Department of the Environment and Heritage, Australian Antarctic Division, and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Dept. of Marine Science, Pusan National University, Pusan, Korea
University of Trieste, Dipartimento di Scienze Geologiche, Ambientali e Marine, Trieste, Italy
On the basis of long simulations performed with a three-dimensional climate model, we propose an interhemispheric climate lag mechanism, involving the long-term memory of deepwater masses. Warm anomalies, formed in the North Atlantic when warm conditions prevail at surface, are transported by the deep ocean circulation towards the Southern Ocean. There, the heat is released because of large scale upwelling, maintaining warm conditions and inducing a lagged response of about 150 years compared to the Northern Hemisphere. Model results and observations covering the first half of the second millenium suggest a delay between the temperature evolution in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Southern Ocean. The mechanism described here provides a reasonable hypothesis to explain such an interhemipsheric lag.
Received 24 November 2003; accepted 19 February 2004; published 17 March 2004.
Citation: (2004), A late medieval warm period in the Southern Ocean as a delayed response to external forcing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L06203, doi:10.1029/2003GL019140.
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