Paleoclimatic responses in the tropical Indian Ocean to regional monsoon and global climate change over the last 42 kyr

Abstract

Paleoclimatic teleconnections between monsoon-dominated regions and the northern Atlantic has been revealed in the tropical Indian Ocean. Millennial-scale climate variability, as registered in Greenland ice cores, was transferred to the low-latitude regions by changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). However, there is still some disputes regarding the mechanism of climatic variation in the tropical Indian Ocean. To explore the interplay responses to regional monsoons and global in the northeastern Indian Ocean, here we present new evidence of trace elements (Mg/Ca and Ba/Ca) and stable isotopes measured from the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber (white) in core ADM-159, which was collected from the central Andaman Sea. Twelve accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates of the planktonic foraminifera Neogloboquedrina dutertrei from the core provide a reliable age model. Our results indicate gradual surface warming with several short-lived fluctuations since ~42 kyr ago. The SST during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was ~3 °C colder than the present SST, and a sharp increase in warming beginning at 18.5 cal ka BP indicated the transition from the LGM to the Holocene; these matched well with the warming trend in the Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. The seawater δ18O record (defined as δ18Osw, presumably salinity-driven) and the Ba/Ca record, which is a measure of the continental riverine runoff from Myanmar, revealed a prominent millennial-scale variability pattern controlled by the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) as seen in speleothem records. The higher salinity values that suggested weakened ISM precipitation and a decrease in freshwater output from the Irrawaddy-Salween rivers were seen at 41.1 cal ka BP–39.9 cal ka BP, 34.9 cal ka BP–32.8 cal ka BP, 29.3 cal ka BP–28 cal ka BP, 25.7 cal ka BP–23.8 cal ka BP, 19.3 cal ka BP–15.8 cal ka BP, 13 cal ka BP–11.4 cal ka BP, and 4.0 cal ka BP–2.3 cal ka BP, reflecting strong correspondence with cold events in North Atlantic. Thus, this study provides evidence that climatic changes in the tropical Indian Ocean responded well to both regional monsoon and global climate changes, and during that atmospheric CO2, solar insolation, and AMOC played the most important roles in those responses.