Warm upwelling regions in the Pliocene warm period

Abstract

Given the importance of upwelling processes to coastal productivity and regional climate, it is critical to study the role of upwelling regions within the context of global climate change. We generated sea surface temperature (SST) records for the last 5 million years in three important upwelling regions: the eastern equatorial Pacific, the California margin, and the Peru margin. Prior to ∼3.0 Ma, SSTs at all sites were significantly warmer than today (by 3–9°C), indicating that cold upwelling regions that characterize the modern Pacific Ocean did not exist in the early Pliocene warm period (4.6 to 3.1 Ma), Earth's most recent period of sustained global warmth. Alkenone, phosphorus, and organic carbon mass accumulation rate records indicate that changes in productivity and SST were decoupled and that upwelling of nutrient enriched water occurred even when SSTs were warm during the early Pliocene. Thus the long‐term trends in SST are likely explained by changes in the temperature of upwelled water rather than in the strength of upwelling‐favorable winds alone. The fact that gradual cooling of upwelling regions began before the onset of significant Northern Hemisphere glaciation provides further evidence that the growth of ice sheets and their influence on atmospheric winds alone can not explain the cooling of upwelling regions. Our results suggest that the long‐term average SSTs of upwelling regions are influenced by global changes in the depth and/or temperature of the ventilated thermocline.