New northwest Pacific radiolarian data as a tool to estimate past sea surface and intermediate water temperatures

Abstract

A new radiolarian data set for transfer function estimates of past sea surface temperature (SST) and intermediate water temperature was developed in this study for the northwestern Pacific Ocean covering a region from 1° to 50°N and 120° to 167°E. We analyzed 87 sediments surface samples, selected 30 species and/or species group found in shallow water for estimating past summer SST and 17 species and/or species group found in the intermediate water for estimating past intermediate water temperature. Since the intermediate water temperature changes greatly between 200 and 500 m, our estimates provide values at 500 m because temperatures are relatively stable between 500 and 1000 m. In this context, we estimated past summer SST and intermediate water (at ~500 m) temperature within an error margin of 0.9 and 1.2°C, respectively. A test of the accuracy of our transfer functions, conducted on core samples provided by IODP Expedition 346 Site U1429 in the northern East China Sea, showed that the reconstructed summer SSTs fluctuated between 17.2 and 26.5°C in selected late Pleistocene sequences. These temperatures corresponded to modern winter and summer SST, respectively, which highlights the ability of our new database to accurately reconstruct summer SST. The reconstructed intermediate water temperature fluctuates between 3 and 8°C, which corresponds to the observed temperature range at depths of ~500 m at high and midlatitudes, respectively.