Abstract
Atmospheric methane is an important greenhouse gas and a sensitive indicator of climate change and millennial-scale temperature variability1. Its concentrations over the past 650,000 years have varied between ∼350 and ∼800 parts per 109 by volume (p.p.b.v.) during glacial and interglacial periods, respectively2. In comparison, present-day methane levels of ∼1,770 p.p.b.v. have been reported3. Insights into the external forcing factors and internal feedbacks controlling atmospheric methane are essential for predicting the methane budget in a warmer world3. Here we present a detailed atmospheric methane record from the EPICA Dome C ice core that extends the history of this greenhouse gas to 800,000 yr before present. The average time resolution of the new data is ∼380 yr and permits the identification of orbital and millennial-scale features. Spectral analyses indicate that the long-term variability in atmospheric methane levels is dominated by ∼100,000 yr glacial–interglacial cycles up to ∼400,000 yr ago with an increasing contribution of the precessional component during the four more recent climatic cycles. We suggest that changes in the strength of tropical methane sources and sinks (wetlands, atmospheric oxidation), possibly influenced by changes in monsoon systems and the position of the intertropical convergence zone, controlled the atmospheric methane budget, with an additional source input during major terminations as the retreat of the northern ice sheet allowed higher methane emissions from extending periglacial wetlands. Millennial-scale changes in methane levels identified in our record as being associated with Antarctic isotope maxima events1,4 are indicative of ubiquitous millennial-scale temperature variability during the past eight glacial cycles.
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Acknowledgements
This work is a contribution to the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), a joint ESF (European Science Foundation)/EC scientific program, funded by the European Commission and by national contributions from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The main logistic support was provided by IPEV and PNRA (at Dome C). Additional funding support of this work was provided by the European FP6 STREP “EPICA-MIS”, by the French ANR PICC (ANR-05-BLAN-0312-01) and by CNRS/INSU programs. We thank the technical team on the field and all those who helped with the methane measurements at Grenoble (B. Bellier, L. Isabello, E. Estrangin, L. Chan-Tung) and at Bern (G. Hausammann). We also thank P. Yiou and P. Naveau for their spectral analysis courses at LSCE, and H. Fischer and G. Dreyfus for their comments. This is EPICA publication no. 195.
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This file provides details on the methane measurements with the offset corrections between the two laboratories (LGGE, Bern) and between Vostok and EDC measured in Grenoble. A note on the time resolution of the CH4 measurements (Figure S2), on the correlation between CH4 and EDC temperature warmth maxima (Figure S3) and on the details of the spectral analyses are added. It includes also supplementary figures S1 (CH4 comparison between Greenland and EDC ice cores), and S4 (phase wheels showing the phase relationship between insolation, CH4 and other proxies). (PDF 405 kb)
The file contains Supplementary Table.
This file provides the CH4 data of the last 800,000 years from the EPICA Dome C ice core. The CH4 concentrations are listed against depth and the corresponding EDC3_gas_a age. (XLS 270 kb)
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Loulergue, L., Schilt, A., Spahni, R. et al. Orbital and millennial-scale features of atmospheric CH4 over the past 800,000 years. Nature 453, 383–386 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06950
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06950
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