Pleistocene water cycle and eastern boundary current processes along the California continental margin

Abstract

[1] Coastal marine sediments contain mixtures of terrestrial and marine paleoclimate proxies that record how the coastal water cycle has behaved over long time frames. We explore a 600 kyr marine record from ODP Site 1018, located due west of Santa Cruz, California, to identify coastal wet and dry periods and to associate them with oceanographic processes. Wet periods in central California, identified by increased tree pollen relative to pollen from grasslands and scrublands, are found on every major deglaciation in the last 600 kyr. Sea surface temperature (SST) data were collected for the last two deglaciations. Wet periods are associated with a rapid rise in SST off central California. SST gradients along the California margin and changes in biogenic deposition show that wet periods in central California are associated with a weakening of the California Current and weakened coastal upwelling. High carbonate production suggests that there was significant curl-of-wind stress upwelling offshore. We propose that wet periods in central California are associated with a meteorological connection to the tropical Pacific and weakened southward flow in the California Current that shunted temperate Pacific water northward into the Alaska gyre. We do not observe evidence for a south-shifted westerly storm track at the last glacial maximum but find that wet periods are diachronous along the California margin. The wettest period around the Santa Barbara Basin peaked at 16 ka, preceding the wet peak in central and northern California by 4 kyr.