A bi-polar signal recorded in the western tropical Pacific: Northern and Southern Hemisphere climate records from the Pacific warm pool during the last Ice Age

Abstract

Western tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures and Pacific Deep Water temperatures during Marine Isotope Stage 3 have been reconstructed from the δ18O and Mg/Ca of planktonic and benthic foraminifera from Marion Dufresne core MD98-2181. This 36m marine core was collected at 6.3°N from a water depth of 2114m. With sediment accumulation rates of up to 80cm/ky, it provides a decadally resolved history of ocean variability during the Last Glacial period. Surface temperatures and salinities at this site varied in close association with millennial-scale atmospheric temperature swings at high northern latitudes as reflected in the GISP2 ice core. At times of colder atmospheric temperatures over Greenland, the western Pacific was more saline and summer season SSTs were ∼2°C colder. These millennial-scale changes within the tropics are attributed to a southward displacement of the summer season ITCZ in response to steeper meridional temperature gradients within the Pacific. The benthic δ18O record from MD98-2181 documents upper Pacific Deep Water temperature and salinity variability. Benthic δ18O variations of 0.3–0.5‰ during MIS 3 indicate deep waters within the Pacific were varying by ∼1–1.5°C, with the possibility that some of the variability was due to changing salinity and minor glacial–eustatic changes. The observed deep-water variability correlates to changes in Antarctic surface temperatures and thus reflects changes in Southern Ocean temperatures at the site of Pacific Deep Water formation. The combined planktonic and benthic records from MD98-2181 thus provide a northern and southern hemispheric climate record of anti-phased variability during MIS 3 as has been inferred previously from ice core records. Furthermore, the deep sea temperature excursions appear to have led millennial variations in atmospheric CO2 as recorded in the EDML ice core by ∼1kyr.