ESD Ideas: Propagation of high-frequency forcing to ice age dynamics

Abstract

Palaeoclimate records display a continuous background of variability connecting centennial to 100 kyr periods. Hence, the dynamics at the centennial, millennial, and astronomical timescales should not be treated separately. Here, we show that the nonlinear character of ice sheet dynamics, which was derived naturally from the ice-flow conservation laws, provides the scaling constraints to explain the structure of the observed spectrum of variability.