Timing of ice-age terminations determined by wavelet methods

Abstract

This paper presents a new analysis of four time series of paleoclimate data, using wavelet methods to determine the timings and characteristics of the ice-age terminations. We use an antisymmetric wavelet which detects locations in the time series where there are large changes. The results are consistent with previous work, but we have, for the first time, been able to explore the features of the individual terminations in an objective way. We find that at the terminations the interval between atmospheric carbon dioxide changes and sea level is about 7 kyr, compared with 15 kyr obtained using Fourier methods, which average the phase over the whole 100 kyr signal. The sea level change is the fastest but occurs after the other three components.