Onset of North Atlantic Deep Water production coincident with inception of the Cenozoic global cooling trend: COMMENT

Abstract

Hohbein et al. (2012) propose an early Mid-Eocene onset of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) production by interpreting a mounded deposit at the south-west end of the Faroe-Shetland Basin (FSB) as a contourite drift, which they term the ‘Judd Falls Drift (JFD)’. We argue that this deposit is not a contourite drift; we also question how their model of early NADW production fits with current understanding of the development of the Faroe-Shetland Basin and the wider Arctic–NE Atlantic region, neither of which was convincingly discussed by these authors.