Clim. Past Discuss., doi:10.5194/cp-2017-71, 2017 Manuscript under review for journal Clim. Past Discussion started: 30 May 2017 c Author(s) 2017. CC-BY 3.0 License. Leads and lags between Antarctic temperature and carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation Léa Gest1, Frédéric Parrenin1, Jai Chowdhry Beeman1, Dominique Raynaud1, Tyler J. Fudge2, Christo Buizert3, Edward J. Brook3. 5 1Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, IGE, F-38000 Grenoble, France 2Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA 3College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA Correspondence to: F. Parrenin (
[email protected]) Abstract. To understand causal relationships in past climate variations, it is essential to have accurate chronologies of 10 paleoclimate records. The last deglaciation, which occurred from 18,000 to 11,000 years ago, is especially interesting, since it is the most recent large climatic variation of global extent. Ice cores in Antarctica provide important paleoclimate proxies, such as regional temperature and global atmospheric CO2. However, temperature is recorded in the ice while CO2 is recorded in the enclosed air bubbles. The ages of the former and of the latter are different since air is trapped at 50-120 m below the surface. It is therefore necessary to correct for this air-ice shift to accurately infer the sequence of events. 15 Here we accurately determine the phasing between East Antarctic temperature and atmospheric CO2 variations during the last deglacial warming based on Antarctic ice core records. We build a stack of East Antarctic temperature variations by averaging the records from 4 ice cores (EPICA Dome C, Dome Fuji, EPICA Dronning Maud Land and Talos Dome), all accurately synchronized by volcanic event matching.