2017/04/05 by Franziska A. Lechleitner, Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach, Kira Rehfeld +11 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Tree-ring climate responses #Climate variability and models #Intertropical Convergence Zone #Teleconnection #Climatology #Geology #Northern Hemisphere #Interglacial #Latitude #Glacial period #Geography #Precipitation #Meteorology #El Niño Southern Oscillation
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/srep45809
openalex publication_date 2017/04/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The presence of a low- to mid-latitude interhemispheric hydrologic seesaw is apparent over orbital and glacial-interglacial timescales, but its existence over the most recent past remains unclear. Here we investigate, based on climate proxy reconstructions from both hemispheres, the inter-hemispherical phasing of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the low- to mid-latitude teleconnections in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2000 years. A clear feature is a persistent southward shift of the ITCZ during the Little Ice Age until the beginning of the 19th Century. Strong covariation between our new composite ITCZ-stack and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) records reveals a tight coupling between these two synoptic weather and climate phenomena over decadal-to-centennial timescales. This relationship becomes most apparent when comparing two precisely dated, high-resolution paleorainfall records from Belize and Scotland, indicating that the low- to mid-latitude teleconnection was also active over annual-decadal timescales. It is likely a combination of external forcing, i.e., solar and volcanic, and internal feedbacks, that drives the synchronous ITCZ and NAO shifts via energy flux perturbations in the tropics.