![PS1920-1 0-750 sediment-core hg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/PS1920-1_0-750_sediment-core_hg.jpg)
Marine isotope stages (MIS), marine oxygen-isotope stages, or oxygen isotope stages (OIS), are alternating warm and cool periods in the Earth's
paleoclimate, deduced from
oxygen isotope data reflecting changes in temperature derived from data from deep sea
core sample
A core sample is a cylindrical section of (usually) a naturally-occurring substance. Most core samples are obtained by drilling with special drills into the substance, such as sediment or rock, with a hollow steel tube, called a core drill. The ...
s. Working backwards from the present, which is MIS 1 in the scale, stages with even numbers have high levels of
oxygen-18
Oxygen-18 (, Ω) is a natural, stable isotope of oxygen and one of the environmental isotopes.
is an important precursor for the production of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) used in positron emission tomography (PET). Generally, in the radiopharmaceu ...
and represent cold glacial periods, while the odd-numbered stages are lows in the oxygen-18 figures, representing warm
interglacial intervals. The data are derived from
pollen
Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophyt ...
and
foraminifera
Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly ...
(
plankton
Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms found in water (or air) that are unable to propel themselves against a current (or wind). The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. In the ocean, they provide a crucia ...
) remains in drilled
marine sediment cores,
sapropel
Sapropel (a contraction of ancient Greek words ''sapros'' and ''pelos'', meaning putrefaction and mud (or clay), respectively) is a term used in marine geology to describe dark-coloured sediments that are rich in organic matter. Organic carbon con ...
s, and other data that reflect historic climate; these are called
proxies.
The MIS timescale was developed from the pioneering work of
Cesare Emiliani in the 1950s, and is now widely used in
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
and other fields to express dating in the
Quaternary period (the last 2.6 million years), as well as providing the fullest and best data for that period for
paleoclimatology
Paleoclimatology (American and British English spelling differences, British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the study of climates for which direct measurements were not taken. As instrumental records only span a tiny part of Earth's history, the ...
or the study of the early climate of the Earth, representing "the standard to which we correlate other Quaternary climate records". Emiliani's work in turn depended on
Harold Urey
Harold Clayton Urey ( ; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in th ...
's prediction in a paper of 1947 that the ratio between oxygen-18 and
oxygen-16
Oxygen-16 (16O) is a stable isotope of oxygen, having 8 neutrons and 8 protons in its nucleus. It has a mass of . Oxygen-16 is the most abundant isotope of oxygen and accounts for 99.762% of oxygen's natural abundance. The relative and absol ...
isotopes in
calcite
Calcite is a Carbonate minerals, carbonate mineral and the most stable Polymorphism (materials science), polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on ...
, the main chemical component of the shells and other hard parts of a wide range of marine organisms, should vary depending on the prevailing water temperature in which the calcite was formed.
Over 100 stages have been identified, currently going back some 6 million years, and the scale may in future reach back up to 15 mya. Some stages, in particular MIS 5, are divided into sub-stages, such as "MIS 5a", with 5 a, c, and e being warm and b and d cold. A numeric system for referring to "horizons" (events rather than periods) may also be used, with for example MIS 5.5 representing the peak point of MIS 5e, and 5.51, 5.52 etc. representing the peaks and troughs of the record at a still more detailed level. For more recent periods, increasingly precise resolution of timing continues to be developed.
Developing a timescale
![2000 core-repository02 hg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/2000_core-repository02_hg.jpg)
In 1957 Emiliani moved to the
University of Miami
The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, i ...
to have access to core-drilling ships and equipment, and began to drill in the
Caribbean and collect core data. A further important advance came in 1967, when
Nicholas Shackleton
Sir Nicholas John Shackleton (23 June 1937 – 24 January 2006) was an English geologist and paleoclimatologist who specialised in the Quaternary Period. He was the son of the distinguished field geologist Robert Millner Shackleton and great ...
suggested that the fluctuations over time in the marine isotope ratios that had become evident by then were caused not so much by changes in water temperature, as Emiliani thought, but mainly by changes in the volume of ice-sheets, which when they expanded took up the lighter oxygen-16 isotope in preference to the heavier oxygen-18. The cycles in the isotope ratio were found to correspond to
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
evidence of glacials and interglacials. A graph of the entire series of stages then revealed unsuspected advances and retreats of ice and also filled in the details of the
stadials and interstadials.
More recent
ice core samples of today's glacial ice substantiated the cycles through studies of ancient
pollen
Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophyt ...
deposition. Currently a number of methods are making additional detail possible. Matching the stages to named periods proceeds as new dates are discovered and new regions are explored geologically. The marine isotopic records appear more complete and detailed than any terrestrial equivalents, and have enabled a timeline of glaciation for the
Plio-Pleistocene
The Plio-Pleistocene is an informally described geological pseudo-period, which begins about 5 million years ago (Mya) and, drawing forward, combines the time ranges of the formally defined Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs—marking from about 5&nb ...
to be identified. It is now believed that changes in the size of the major
ice sheet
In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at La ...
s such as the historical
Laurentide Ice Sheet
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million year ...
of North America are the main factor governing variations in the oxygen isotope ratios.
The MIS data also matches the astronomical data of
Milankovitch cycles
Milankovitch cycles describe the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements on its climate over thousands of years. The term was coined and named after Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković. In the 1920s, he hypot ...
of
orbital forcing
Orbital forcing is the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis and shape of the Earth's orbit around the sun (see Milankovitch cycles). These orbital changes modify the total amount of sunlight reaching the Earth by up to ...
or the effects of variations in
insolation caused by cyclical slight changes in the tilt of the earth's axis of rotation – the "orbital theory". Indeed, that the MIS data matched Milankovich's theory, which he formed during World War I, so well was a key factor in the theory gaining general acceptance, despite some remaining problems at certain points, notably the so-called
100,000-year problem. For relatively recent periods data from
radiocarbon
Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and c ...
dating and
dendrochronology also support the MIS data. The sediments also acquire
depositional remanent magnetization which allows them to be correlated with earth's
geomagnetic reversal
A geomagnetic reversal is a change in a planet's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged (not to be confused with geographic north and geographic south). The Earth's field has alternated ...
s. For older core samples, individual annual depositions cannot usually be distinguished, and dating is taken from the geomagnetic information in the cores. Other information, especially as to the ratios of gases such as
carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...
in the atmosphere, is provided by analysis of
ice cores.
The Project, funded by the US
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
, has produced one standard chronology for
oxygen isotope
There are three known stable isotopes of oxygen (8O): , , and .
Radioactive isotopes ranging from to have also been characterized, all short-lived. The longest-lived radioisotope is with a half-life of , while the shortest-lived isotope is ...
records, although there are others. This high resolution chronology was derived from several isotopic records, the composite curve was then smoothed, filtered and tuned to the known cycles of the astronomical variables. The use of a number of isotopic profiles was designed to eliminate 'noise' errors, that could have been contained within a single isotopic record. Another large research project funded by the US government in the 1970s and 1980s was
Climate: Long range Investigation, Mapping, and Prediction (CLIMAP), which to a large degree succeeded in its aim of producing a map of the global climate at the
Last Glacial Maximum
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent.
Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...
, some 18,000 years ago, with some of the research also directed at the climate some 120,000 years ago, during the last interglacial. The theoretical advances and greatly improved data available by the 1970s enabled a "grand synthesis" to be made, best known from the 1976 paper ''Variations in the earth’s orbit: pacemaker of the ice ages'' (in ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
''), by J.D. Hays, Shackleton and
John Imbrie
John Imbrie (July 4, 1925 – May 13, 2016) was an American paleoceanographer best known for his work on the theory of ice ages. He was the grandson of William Imbrie, an American missionary to Japan.
After serving with the 10th Mountain ...
, which is still very widely accepted today, and covers the MIS timescale and the causal effect of the orbital theory.
In 2010 the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the
International Commission on Stratigraphy
The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), sometimes referred to unofficially as the "International Stratigraphic Commission", is a daughter or major subcommittee grade scientific daughter organization that concerns itself with stratigr ...
dropped other lists of MIS dates and started using the Lisiecki & Raymo (2005) LR04 Benthic Stack, as updated. This was compiled by
Lorraine Lisiecki
Lorraine Lisiecki is an American paleoclimatologist. She is a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has proposed a new analysis of the 100,000-year problem in the Milankovitch theory of ...
and
Maureen Raymo
Maureen E. "Mo" Raymo (born 1959) is an American paleoclimatologist and marine geologist. She is the Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, Director of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, the G. Unger Vetle ...
.
Stages
![Ocean core sediments on the Polarstern](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Ocean_core_sediments_on_the_Polarstern.jpg)
The following are the start dates (apart from MIS 5 sub-stages) of the most recent MIS (Lisiecki & Raymo 2005,
LR04 Benthic Stack). The figures, in thousands of years ago, are from Lisiecki's website. Numbers for substages in MIS 5 denote peaks of substages rather than boundaries.
:MIS Start date
*MIS 1 – 14 kya, end of the
Younger Dryas
The Younger Dryas (c. 12,900 to 11,700 years BP) was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 27,000 to 20,000 years BP). The Younger Dryas was the last stag ...
marks the start of the
Holocene
The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...
. The LR04 date of 14 kya had to accommodate less well studied time intervals, and the generally accepted date of 11.7 kya is to be preferred.
*MIS 2 – 29 (
Last Glacial Maximum
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent.
Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...
)
*MIS 3 – 57 (MIS 2-4 is called the
Last Glacial Period,
Wisconsinan glaciation in North America,
Weichselian glaciation
The Weichselian glaciation was the last glacial period and its associated glaciation in northern parts of Europe. In the Alpine region it corresponds to the Würm glaciation. It was characterized by a large ice sheet (the Fenno-Scandian ice sheet) ...
in northern Europe)
*MIS 4 – 71
*
MIS 5
Marine Isotope Stage 5 or MIS 5 is a marine isotope stage in the geologic temperature record, between 130,000 and 80,000 years ago. Sub-stage MIS 5e, called the Eemian or Ipswichian, covers the last major interglacial period before the Holocene, w ...
– 130, usually sub-divided into a to e:
**MIS 5a – 82 (peak of interglacial sub-stage)
**MIS 5b – 87 (peak of glacial sub-stage)
**MIS 5c – 96 (peak of interglacial sub-stage)
**MIS 5d – 109 (peak of glacial sub-stage)
**MIS 5e – 123 (peak of
Eemian interglacial sub-stage, or Ipswichian in Britain)
*MIS 6 – 191 (
Illinoian glacial in North America,
Saalian
The Saale glaciation or Saale Glaciation, sometimes referred to as the Saalian glaciation, Saale cold period (german: Saale-Kaltzeit), Saale complex (''Saale-Komplex'') or Saale glacial stage (''Saale-Glazial'', colloquially also the ''Saale-Eiszei ...
in northern Europe and later
Wolstonian
The Wolstonian Stage is a middle Pleistocene stage of the geological history of Earth from approximately 374,000 until 130,000 years ago. It precedes the Eemian Stage in Europe and follows the Hoxnian Stage in the British Isles.
It is also appro ...
in Britain)
*MIS 7 – 243 (Aveley Interglacial in Britain)
*MIS 8 – 300 (early
Wolstonian
The Wolstonian Stage is a middle Pleistocene stage of the geological history of Earth from approximately 374,000 until 130,000 years ago. It precedes the Eemian Stage in Europe and follows the Hoxnian Stage in the British Isles.
It is also appro ...
in Britain)
*
MIS 9 Marine Isotope Stage 9 (MIS 9) is a Marine Isotope Stage in the geological record. It is the final period of the Lower Paleolithic, and lasts from 337,000 to 300,000 years ago according to Lisiecki and Raymo's LR04 Benthic Stack, which has been ado ...
– 337 (
Purfleet Interglacial Marine Isotope Stage 9 (MIS 9) is a Marine Isotope Stage in the geological record. It is the final period of the Lower Paleolithic, and lasts from 337,000 to 300,000 years ago according to Lisiecki and Raymo's LR04 Benthic Stack, which has been ado ...
in Britain)
*MIS 10 – 374
*
MIS 11 – 424 (
Hoxnian Interglacial
__NOTOC__
The Hoxnian Stage was a middle Pleistocene stage (Pleistocene from million to 11,700 years BP) of the geological history of the British Isles. It was an interglacial which preceded the Wolstonian Stage and followed the Anglian Stage. I ...
in Britain)
*MIS 12 – 478 (
Anglian Glacial in Britain,
Elster glaciation
The Elster glaciation (german: Elster-Kaltzeit, ''Elster-Glazial'' or ''Elster-Zeit'') or, less commonly, the Elsterian glaciation, in the older and popular scientific literature also called the Elster Ice Age (''Elster-Eiszeit''), is the oldest k ...
in northern Europe)
*
MIS 13 – 524
*MIS 14 – 563
*MIS 15 – 621
*
MIS 16
The Don Glaciation, also known as the Donian Glaciation and the Donian Stage, was the major glaciation of the East European Plain, 0.5–0.8 million years ago, during the Cromerian Stage of the Middle Pleistocene. It is correlated to Marine Isotop ...
– 676
*MIS 17 – 712
*MIS 18 – 761
*MIS 19 – 790 (
Brunhes–Matuyama reversal
The Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, named after Bernard Brunhes and Motonori Matuyama, was a geologic event, approximately 781,000 years ago, when the Earth's magnetic field last underwent reversal. Estimations vary as to the abruptness of the reve ...
)
*MIS 20 – 814
*MIS 21 – 866
The list continues to MIS 104, beginning 2.614 million years ago.
Older versions
The following are the ''start dates'' of the most recent MIS, in
kya (thousands of years ago). The first figures are derived by Aitken & Stokes from Bassinot et al. (1994), with the figures in parentheses alternative estimates from Martinson et al. for stage 4 and for the others the SPECMAP figures in Imbrie et al. (1984). For stages 1–16 the SPECMAP figures are within 5 kya of the figures given here. All figures up to MIS 21 are taken from Aitken & Stokes, Table 1.4, except for the sub-stages of MIS 5, which are from Wright's Table 1.1.
*MIS 1 – 11 kya, end of the
Younger Dryas
The Younger Dryas (c. 12,900 to 11,700 years BP) was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 27,000 to 20,000 years BP). The Younger Dryas was the last stag ...
marks the start of the
Holocene
The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...
, continuing to the present
*MIS 2 – 24 near
Last Glacial Maximum
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent.
Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...
*MIS 3 – 60
*MIS 4 – 71 (74)
*MIS 5 – 130, includes the
Eemian; usually sub-divided into a to 5e:
**MIS 5a – 84.74
**MIS 5b – 92.84
**MIS 5c – 105.92
**MIS 5d – 115.105
**MIS 5e – 130.115
*MIS 6 – 190
*MIS 7 – 244
*MIS 8 – 301
*MIS 9 – 334
*MIS 10 – 364
*
MIS 11 427, the most similar to MIS 1.
*MIS 12 – 474
*
MIS 13 – 528
*MIS 14 – 568
*MIS 15 – 621
*MIS 16 – 659
*MIS 17 – 712 (689)
*MIS 18 – 760 (726)
*MIS 19 – 787 (736)
*MIS 20 – 810 (763)
*MIS 21 – 865 (790)
Some older stages, in mya (millions of years ago):
[all (MIS 22, 62, 103) from "Concise", figs 15.6 and 15.7]
*MIS 22 – 1.03 mya, marking the end of the
Bavelian period in Europe
*MIS 62 – 1.75, end of the
Tiglian
The Tiglian, also referred to as the Tegelen, is a temperate complex stage in the glacial history of Northern Europe. It is preceded by the Praetiglian (stage). The stage was introduced by Zagwijn in 1957 based on geological formations in Tegelen i ...
*MIS 103 – 2.588, end of the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58[Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...](_blank)
, on the
INQUA time scale (older definitions put this change at 1.806 mya – the MIS date is unaffected)
See also
*
Timeline of glaciation
There have been five or six major ice ages in the history of Earth over the past 3 billion years.
The Late Cenozoic Ice Age began 34 million years ago, its latest phase being the Quaternary glaciation, in progress since 2.58 million years ago ...
*
Geologic temperature record
The geologic temperature record are changes in Earth's environment as determined from geologic evidence on multi-million to billion (109) year time scales. The study of past temperatures provides an important paleoenvironmental insight because ...
*
Paleothermometer
A paleothermometer is a methodology that provides an estimate of the ambient temperature at the time of formation of a natural material. Most paleothermometers are based on empirically-calibrated proxy relationships, such as the tree ring or TE ...
*
Anthropocene
The Anthropocene ( ) is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.
, neither the International Commissio ...
*
Marine terrace
A raised beach, coastal terrace,Pinter, N (2010): 'Coastal Terraces, Sealevel, and Active Tectonics' (educational exercise), from 2/04/2011or perched coastline is a relatively flat, horizontal or gently inclined surface of marine origin,Pira ...
*
Ice core
Notes
Citations
References
* Aitken, Martin J and Stokes, Stephen, in Taylor, Royal Ervin Taylor and Aitken, Martin Jim (eds), ''Chronometric dating in archaeology'', Chapter 1, 1997, Birkhäuser, ,
google books*Andrews, John T., "Dating Glacial Events and Correlation to Global Climate Change", in Noller, Jay S., Sowers, Janet M., Lettis, William R. (eds), ''Quaternary geochronology: methods and applications'', 2000, American Geophysical Union, , ,
* "Concise", Ogg, James George, Ogg, Gabi, Gradstein F. M., ''The Concise Geologic Time Scale'', 2008, Cambridge University Press, 2008, ,
* Cronin, Thomas M., ''Paleoclimates: understanding climate change past and present'', Columbia University Press, 2010, ,
google books*
*Sowers, Janet M., "Correlating Quaternary Landforms and Deposits to Global Climate Change", in Noller, Jay S., Sowers, Janet M., Lettis, William R. (eds), ''Quaternary geochronology: methods and applications'', 2000, American Geophysical Union, , ,
* Wright, James D., "Global Climate Change in Marine Stable Isotope Records", in Noller, Jay S., Sowers, Janet M., Lettis, William R. (eds), ''Quaternary geochronology: methods and applications'', 2000, American Geophysical Union, , {{ISBN, 978-0-87590-950-9
google books
Further reading
*Cohen, K.M. and Gibbard, P.L.
''Global chronostratigraphical correlation table for the last 2.7 million years''(updated version 2011), Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, International Commission on Stratigraphy: Cambridge.
External links
Marine Isotope Substage 5e and the Eemian Interglacial ''NJ Shackleton'', 2003
650,000 years of greenhouse gas concentrations ''RealClimate'', 2005
Glacial variability over the last two million years ''P Huybers'', 2007
''Reed Scherer'', 2007
''Alexander J. Dickson , Christopher J. Beer , Ciara Dempsey , Mark A. Maslin , James A. Bendle , Erin L. McClymont & Richard D. Pancost'', 2009
Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago ''Aradhna Tripati'', 2009
Global chronostratigraphical correlation table for the last 2.7 million years, v.2010, International Commission on Stratigraphy
Dating methods
*
Glaciology
Paleoclimatology
Stratigraphy