Oregon Caves National Monument 13,000 Year Stalagmite Stable Isotope Data Ersek, V.; Clark, P.U.; Mix, A.C.; Cheng, H.; Edwards, R.L. Ersek, V. Clark, P.U. Mix, A.C. Cheng, H. Edwards, R.L. Pacific Decadal Oscillation earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (depth,null,null,millimeter,null,speleothems,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (delta 18O,calcium carbonate,null,per mil VPDB,null,speleothems,corrected,isotope ratio mass spectrometry,N,corrected for ice volume) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (delta 18O,calcium carbonate,null,per mil VPDB,null,speleothems,raw,isotope ratio mass spectrometry,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (age,null,null,calendar kiloyear before present,null,speleothems,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (delta 13C,calcium carbonate,null,per mil VPDB,null,speleothems,raw,isotope ratio mass spectrometry,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (delta 13C,calcium carbonate,null,per mil VPDB,null,speleothems,averaged|interpolated|smoothed,isotope ratio mass spectrometry,N,interpolated to 4-year time steps: first block-averaging in 1-year increments for any subannual resolution and then using Gaussian interpolation with a smoothing window of 30 years) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (delta 18O,calcium carbonate,null,per mil VPDB,null,speleothems,averaged|interpolated|smoothed,isotope ratio mass spectrometry,N,interpolated to 4-year time steps: first block-averaging in 1-year increments for any subannual resolution and then using Gaussian interpolation with a smoothing window of 30 years) earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems earth science/paleoclimate/speleothems (Oregon Caves National Monument>LATITUDE 42.0981>LONGITUDE -123.4072) Water resources in western North America depend on winter precipitation, yet our knowledge of its sensitivity to climate change remains limited. Similarly, understanding the potential for future loss of winter snow pack requires a longer perspective on natural climate variability. Here we use stable isotopes from a speleothem in southwestern Oregon to reconstruct winter climate change for much of the past 13,000 years. We find that on millennial time scales there were abrupt transitions between warm-dry and cold-wet regimes. Temperature and precipitation changes on multi-decadal to century timescales are consistent with ocean-atmosphere interactions that arise from mechanisms similar to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Extreme cold-wet and warm-dry events that punctuated the Holocene appear to be sensitive to solar forcing, possibly through the influence of the equatorial Pacific on the winter storm tracks reaching the US Pacific Northwest region. STUDY NOTES: Oxygen and carbon stable isotope data from stalagmite OCN02-1 collected in Oregon Caves National Monument NCDC-Paleoclimatology https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data - Bauer Bruce Investigator : Ersek, V. Investigator : Clark, P.U. Investigator : Mix, A.C. Investigator : Cheng, H. Investigator : Edwards, R.L. 2012-11-29 ONLINE Files online, ASCII https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/13543 https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/speleothem/northamerica/usa/oregon/oregoncaves2012ersek.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/speleothem/northamerica/usa/oregon/oregoncaves2012vacco.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/speleothem/northamerica/usa/oregon/oregoncaves2012ersek.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/speleothem/northamerica/usa/oregon/oregoncaves2012vacco.txt English https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/13543 https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/speleothem/northamerica/usa/oregon/oregoncaves2012ersek.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/speleothem/northamerica/usa/oregon/oregoncaves2012vacco.txt Ersek, Vasile, Peter U. Clark, Alan C. Mix, Hai Cheng, and R. Lawrence Edwards. 2012. Holocene winter climate variability in mid-latitude western North America. Nature Communications, Vol. 3, No. 1219. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2222 START YEAR: 13320 cal yr BP * END YEAR: 234 cal yr BP -123.4072 42.0981 -123.4072 42.0981