Glaciation · Peter Huybers

What causes the variability in Plio-Pleistocene glaciation?

A global survey of midocean ridge spacing shows the influence of Late-Pleistocene sea-level variations on ridge spacing, supporting a link between glacial sea-level variations and mid-ocean ridge magmatic variations 2022.
Parker Liautaud made a prediction of what Early‐Pleistocene atmospheric CO2 values should look like based on the observed relationship between CO2 and sea level during the Late-Pleistocene 2022.
Parker also showed how sea-level sensitivity to CO2 forcing increases across the Middle Pleistocene Transition from ice-albedo and ice-volume nonlinearities. The approach taken combines a model with observations and explicitly takes into account age-model uncertainty 2021.
As another contribution, Parker showed that climatic precession is evident during the so-called '41-ky world' of the Early Pleistocene 2020.
That deglaciation can increase subaerial volcanic CO2 emission and decrease mid-ocean ridge CO2 emissions, but with a lagged response for mid-ocean ridges, sets up the conditions for a delayed volcano-sealevel-CO2 oscillator 2017.
Amy Daradich showed that true polar wander helped initiate North American glaciation 2017.
It has become increasingly clear that understanding glacial cycles requires understanding of the accompanying changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Although generally ascribed to variations in marine carbon pools, changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations may also involve variations in fluxes from the solid Earth. Glacial unloading appears to have roughly tripled global volcanic activity during the last deglaciation and, quite possibly, also increased the volcanic emission of CO2 (2009).
Another line of work is to distinguish between the many competing glacial hypotheses by testing the extent to which obliquity and precession control the timing of deglaciation (2005, 2011). A related question is why there is not more precession variability evident in proxy records during the early Pleistocene (2006, 2008)?
Further examples of interactions between glaciation and other parts of Earth's climate include that long term cooling in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific may have initiated Northern Hemisphere glaciation (e.g. 2007), and that Antarctica's response to insolation forcing seems to mirror and may reinforce the Northern response (2008).
High resolution imagery and topography from Mars offers another perspective for understanding the orbital influence on glaciation, though positively identifying orbital variability has been challenging given currently available data (2009). We have been trying a different technique for identification of late (2014).

References

Huybers, Liautaud, Proistosescu, Boulahanis, Carbotte, Katz, and Langmuir, Influence of late Pleistocene sea-level variations on midocean ridge spacing in faulting simulations and a global analysis of bathymetry, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(28), 2022. link.
Liautaud and Huybers, Uniformitarian Prediction of Early‐Pleistocene Atmospheric CO2, Geophysical Research Letters 49(20), 2022. link.
Liautaud and Huybers, Increased sea-level sensitivity to CO2 forcing across the Middle Pleistocene Transition from ice-albedo and ice-volume nonlinearities, Journal of Climate, 2021. link.
Liautaud, Hodell, and Huybers, Detection of significant climatic precession variability in early Pleistocene glacial cycles , Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2020. link.
Costa, McManus, Middleton, Langmuir, Huybers, Winckler, and Mukhopadhyay Hydrothermal deposition on the Juan de Fuca Ridge over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v479, 2017. link, pdf
Huybers and Langmuir Delayed CO2 emissions from mid-ocean ridge volcanism as a possible cause of late-Pleistocene glacial cycles, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2017. link, pdf
Daradich, Huybers, Mitrovica, Chan, and Austermann The influence of true polar wander on glacial inception in North America, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2017. link, pdf
Sori, Perron, Huybers and Aharonson. A procedure for testing the significance of orbital tuning of the Martian polar layered deposits Icarus, 2014. pdf
Gomez, Pollard, Mitrovica, Huybers and Clark Evolution of a coupled marine ice sheet---sea level model, Journal of Geophysical Research, 2012. pdf
Huybers, Combined obliquity and precession pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial cycles, Nature, 2011. pdf
Gomez, Mitrovica, Huybers and Clark Sea level as a stabilizing factor for marine ice-sheet grounding lines, Nature Geoscience, 2010. pdf
Siddall, Hönisch, Waelbroeck and Huybers Changes in deep Pacific temperature during the mid-Pleistocene transition and Quaternary, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2010. pdf
Clark and Huybers, Interglacial and future sea level, Nature news & views, 2009. pdf
Huybers, Antarctica's orbital beat, Science, 2009. pdf
Huybers, Pleistocene glacial variability as a chaotic response to obliquity forcing , Climate of the Past, 2009. pdf
Huybers and Langmuir, Feedback between deglaciation, volcanism and atmospheric CO2 , Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2009. pdf and supplementary data
Naish and co-authors Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations, Nature, 2009. pdf
Perron and Huybers, Is there an orbital signal in the polar layered deposits on Mars? , Geology, 2009. pdf
Huybers and Tziperman, Integrated summer insolation forcing and 40,000 year glacial cycles: the perspective from an icesheet/energy-balance model, Paleoceanography, 23, PA1208, 2008. pdf and code
Huybers and Denton, Antarctic temperature at orbital time scales controlled by local summer duration, Nature Geoscience, 2008. pdf and supplementary material
Raymo and Huybers, Unlocking the mysteries of the ice ages, Nature, 2008. pdf
Huybers, Glacial variability over the last 2Ma: an extended depth-derived agemodel, continuous obliquity pacing, and the Pleistocene progression, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2007. pdf and supplemental material
Huybers and Molnar, Tropical cooling and the onset of North American glaciation, Climate of the Past, 2007. pdf
Tziperman, Raymo, Huybers and Wunsch Consequences of pacing the Pleistocene 100 kyr ice ages by nonlinear phase locking to Milankovitch forcing, Paleoceanography, 2006. pdf
Huybers and Curry, Links between annual, Milankovitch, and continuum temperature variability, Nature, 2006. pdf and supplemental material
Huybers and Wunsch, Obliquity pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial terminations, Nature, 2005. pdf
Huybers, Early Pleistocene glacial cycles and the integrated summer insolation forcing, Science, 2006. pdf, supporting online material, and insolation values and code posted at NCDC
Huybers and Wunsch, A depth-derived Pleistocene age-model: uncertainty estimates, sedimentation variability, and nonlinear climate change, Paleoceanography, 2004. pdf
Huybers and Wunsch, Rectification and precession-period signals in the climate system, Geophysical Research Letters, 2003. pdf