The 100,000-Year Ice-Age Cycle Identified and Found to Lag Temperature, Carbon Dioxide, and Orbital Eccentricity

Abstract

The deep-sea sediment oxygen isotopic composition (δ¹⁸O) record is dominated by a 100,000-year cyclicity that is universally interpreted as the main ice-age rhythm. Here, the ice volume component of this δ¹⁸O signal was extracted by using the record of δ¹⁸O in atmospheric oxygen trapped in Antarctic ice at Vostok, precisely orbitally tuned. The benthic marine δ¹⁸O record is heavily contaminated by the effect of deep-water temperature variability, but by using the Vostok record, the δ¹⁸O signals of ice volume, deep-water temperature, and additional processes affecting air δ¹⁸O (that is, a varying Dole effect) were separated. At the 100,000-year period, atmospheric carbon dioxide, Vostok air temperature, and deep-water temperature are in phase with orbital eccentricity, whereas ice volume lags these three variables. Hence, the 100,000-year cycle does not arise from ice sheet dynamics; instead, it is probably the response of the global carbon cycle that generates the eccentricity signal by causing changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.