Was the Arctic Eocene ‘rainforest’ monsoonal? Estimates of seasonal precipitation from early Eocene megafloras from Ellesmere Island, Nunavut

Abstract

The early Eocene was the warmest interval of the Cenozoic, and included within it were several hyperthermal events, with the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) the most pronounced of these. These globally warm climates extended into the Arctic and substantive paleobotanical evidence for high Arctic precipitation (MAP > 150 cm/yr) is indicative of an Arctic rainforest, which contradicts some climate models that show low Arctic precipitation. Prior studies of Arctic early Eocene wood stable-isotope chemistry, however, have shown a summer peak in precipitation, which suggests modern analogs are best sought on the summer-wet east coast of the Asia (e.g., China, Japan, South Korea), not the winter-wet west coasts of the Pacific Northwest of North America). Furthermore, some prior modeling data suggest that highly seasonal ‘monsoon-type’ summer-wet precipitation regimes (i.e., summer:MAP > 55%) characterized certain mid and lower latitude regions in the early to mid-Eocene. Presented here is a new analysis using leaf physiognomy of 3 leaf megafloras (Split Lake, Stenkul Fiord and Strathcona Fiord) and palynofloral Bioclimatic Analysis from the Margaret Formation from Ellesmere Island, placed stratigraphically as early Eocene, possibly occurring during or following one of the early Eocene hyperthermals. These new data indicate high summer precipitation in the Arctic during the early Eocene, which in part corroborates the results from Eocene wood chemistry. Nevertheless, in contradiction to the wood analysis, monsoonal conditions are not indicated by our analysis, consistent with current modeling studies. High summer (light season) and winter (dark season) precipitation in the Eocene Arctic during hyperthermals would have contributed to regional warmth.