Climate of the Past www.clim-past.net 1814-9324 1814-9332 6 3 2010 10.5194/cp-6-345-2010 http://www.clim-past.net/6/345/2010/ http://www.clim-past.net/6/345/2010/cp-6-345-2010.html http://www.clim-past.net/6/345/2010/cp-6-345-2010.pdf 345 365 2010-06-09 Millennial and sub-millennial scale climatic variations recorded in polar ice cores over the last glacial period E. Capron emilie.capron@lsce.ipsl.fr A. Landais J. Chappellaz A. Schilt D. Buiron D. Dahl-Jensen S. J. Johnsen J. Jouzel B. Lemieux-Dudon L. Loulergue M. Leuenberger V. Masson-Delmotte H. Meyer H. Oerter B. Stenni Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace/Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA-UMR INSU/CNRS 8212-UVSQ, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement, CNRS-UJF, 38400 St Martin d'Hères, France Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Sidlerstr. 5, 3012 Bern, Switzerland Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, Univ. of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, P.O. Box 120161, 27515, Bremerhaven, Germany University of Trieste, Department of Geosciences, Via E. Weiss 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy Since its discovery in Greenland ice cores, the millennial scale climatic variability of the last glacial period has been increasingly documented at all latitudes with studies focusing mainly on Marine Isotopic Stage 3 (MIS 3; 28–60 thousand of years before present, hereafter ka) and characterized by short Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events. Recent and new results obtained on the EPICA and NorthGRIP ice cores now precisely describe the rapid variations of Antarctic and Greenland temperature during MIS 5 (73.5–123 ka), a time period corresponding to relatively high sea level. The results display a succession of abrupt events associated with long Greenland InterStadial phases (GIS) enabling us to highlight a sub-millennial scale climatic variability depicted by (i) short-lived and abrupt warming events preceding some GIS (precursor-type events) and (ii) abrupt warming events at the end of some GIS (rebound-type events). 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