Polar Frontal Migration in the Warm Late Pliocene: Diatom Evidence From the Wilkes Land Margin, East Antarctica

Abstract

AbstractThe late Pliocene is the most recent interval in Earth's history to sustain global temperatures within the range of warming predicted for the 21st century, providing an appealing analog for the changes we might encounter in the coming century. Published global reconstructions and climate models find an average +2° summer sea surface temperature anomaly relative to modern during the 3.3–3.0 Ma interval of the late Pliocene, when atmospheric CO2 concentrations last reached 400 ppm. Here we present a new diatom‐based reconstruction of Pliocene interglacial sea surface conditions from IODP Site U1361, on the East Antarctic continental rise. We find that open ocean conditions in the mid‐Pliocene became increasingly influenced by sea ice from 3.6–3.2 Ma, prior to the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. This cooling trend was interrupted by a temporary southward migration of the Antarctic Polar Front, bathing U1361 in subantarctic waters during a single interglacial—marine isotope stage KM3 (3.17–3.15 Ma)—after which sea ice returned. Building on the identification of this single outlier interglacial, we have revisited earlier reconstructions to explore the response of the Southern Ocean/cryosphere system to peak late Pliocene warmth. By applying a modern chronostratigraphic framework to those low‐resolution reconstructions, we identify the same frontal migration in four other cores in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, documenting a major migration of the polar front during a key interval of warm climate. These new results suggest that KM3 is a crucial interval to test ice sheet stability in the context of anthropogenic warming.