Net Carbon Transfer From Ocean to Land During the Last Deglaciation Synchronous With Sea Level Rise and Lagging Atmospheric CO 2 by Several Millennia

The sequence of events in the global carbon cycle during deglaciations is not entirely understood. Here, we analyze mean ocean C and O in an updated compilation of foraminiferal stable isotope data comprising 902 time series from 381 sediment cores, with individual records covering intervals within the past 23,000 years. We use changes in mean ocean temperature from ice cores to split O into its temperature and seawater components. We show that a ‰ rise in mean ocean C occurred quasi‐synchronously with changes in seawater O and is lagging the rise in atmospheric during Termination I by ∼2,000 years. Since mean ocean C is understood to mainly record net changes in land carbon storage and seawater O is mainly depicting the rise in global mean sea level this implies that land carbon changed in‐phase with sea level and not with atmospheric .