White paper: The IPICS 40,000 year network: a bipolar record of climate forcing and response

Records of past climate are critical tools for ensuring that the relevant processes are represented in climate models: the same models used to predict future climate. Recent paleoclimate reconstructions clearly document that the Earth’s climate is an intricate interplay of oceanic, atmospheric, biogeochemical, and cryospheric processes. However, the reasons for changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and aerosol loads, sea-level and ice masses as well as their coupling to atmospheric and ocean circulation are still not sufficiently understood. Previous ice core records from central Greenland and East Antarctica defined the overall features of glacial and interglacial periods and transitions between them, and the characteristics of rapid climate change during the last ice age, at a few individual sites. However, the progression of deglaciation, the spatial evolution of climate change, and the processes responsible for those changes cannot be diagnosed from single locations. A network of temporally synchronized, high-resolution ice cores from both polar regions, documenting in greater spatial and temporal detail parameters that play a pivotal role in climate evolution, such as storm activity, marine biospheric productivity, sea ice and ice sheet extent is the key to diagnosing climate change mechanisms.