A high-resolution deuterium profile is now available along the entire European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica Dome C ice core, extending this climate record back to marine isotope stage 20.2, ~800,000 years ago. Experiments performed with an atmospheric general circulation model including water isotopes support its temperature interpretation. We assessed the general correspondence between Dansgaard-Oeschger events and their smoothed Antarctic counterparts for this Dome C record, which reveals the presence of such features with similar amplitudes during previous glacial periods. We suggest that the interplay between obliquity and precession accounts for the variable intensity of interglacial periods in ice core records.Temperature was estimated after correction for sea-water isotopic composition (Bintanja et al, 2005) and for ice sheet elevation (Parrenin et al, 2007) on EDC3 age scale (Parrenin et al, 2007).

Supplement to: Jouzel, Jean; Masson-Delmotte, Valerie; Cattani, Olivier; Dreyfus, Gabrielle; Falourd, Sonia; Hoffmann, G; Minster, Bénédicte; Nouet, Julius; Barnola, Jean-Marc; Chappellaz, Jérôme A; Fischer, Hubertus; Gallet, J C; Johnsen, Sigfús Jóhann; Leuenberger, Markus Christian; Loulergue, Laetitia; Luethi, D; Oerter, Hans; Parrenin, Frédéric; Raisbeck, Grant M; Raynaud, Dominique; Schilt, Adrian; Schwander, Jakob; Selmo, Enricomaria; Souchez, Roland A; Spahni, Renato; Stauffer, Bernhard; Steffensen, Jørgen Peder; Stenni, Barbara; Stocker, Thomas F; Tison, Jean-Louis; Werner, Martin; Wolff, Eric William (2007): Orbital and millennial Antarctic climate variability over the past 800,000 years. Science, 317(5839), 793-797