What ends an Interglacial? Feedbacks between tropical rainfall, Atlantic climate and ice sheets during the Last Interglacial (EndLIG)

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When and how the present interglacial will end remains an open question. With a relatively wellknown climate, the Last Interglacial (LIG) and following glacial inception can shed some light on the climate mechanisms leading to the establishment of a new ice age. Two key questions arise from the chain of climate events known to end the LIG: (1) Did the interglacial North Atlantic warmth, prolonged by an active thermohaline circulation (THC), favor or delay the growth of northern ice sheets? (2) Did reorganizations in South American moisture contribute to prolong the North Atlantic warmth by maintaining a salty North Atlantic and active THC at the end of the LIG, as suggested by tropical moisture feedbacks observed during glacial times? To address these questions, we propose here to combine new paleoclimate reconstructions with climate model experiments. First, we will reconstruct the detailed evolution of the South American rainbelt during the last glacial inception, by applying complementary proxies on a transect of marine sediment cores. Second, we will assess the impact of tropical hydrologic changes on tropical Atlantic sea surface salinities (SSS) and the Atlantic THC, by comparing tropical Atlantic SSS and deep-water properties with model sensitivity experiments where we will vary the tropical freshwater forcing. Finally, we will perform a transient climate/ice-sheet model run for the last glacial inception, and a sensitivity study, in which different ocean heat fluxes will be imposed to investigate the effect of prolonged North Atlantic warmth on ice sheet growth.