Age determination of sediment core W8709A-13

Northeast Pacific benthic foraminiferal d18O and d13 reveal repeated millennial-scale events of strong deep-sea ventilation (associated with nutrient depletion and/or high gas exchange) during stadial (cool, high ice volume) episodes from 10 to 60 ka, opposite the pattern in the deep North Atlantic. Two climate mechanisms may explain this pattern. North Pacific surface waters, chilled by atmospheric transmission from a cold North Atlantic and made saltier by reduced freshwater vapor transports, could have ventilated the deep Pacific from above. Alternatively, faster turnover of Pacific bottom and mid-depth waters, driven by Southern Ocean winds, may have compensated for suppressed North Atlantic Deep Water production during stadial intervals. During the Younger Dryas event (~11.6-13.0 cal ka), ventilation of the deep NE Pacific (~2700 m) lagged that in the Santa Barbara Basin (~450 m) by >500 years, suggesting that the NE Pacific was first ventilated at intermediate depth from above and then at greater depth from below. This apparent lag may reflect the adjustment time of global thermohaline circulation.

Data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification: environmental and experimental context of data sets and related literature

The exponential growth of studies on the biological response to ocean acidification over the last few decades has generated a large amount of data. To facilitate data comparison, a data compilation hosted at the data publisher PANGAEA was initiated in 2008 and is updated on a regular basis (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.149999). By January 2015, a total of 581 data sets (over 4 000 000 data points) from 539 papers had been archived. Here we present the developments of this data compilation five years since its first description by Nisumaa et al. (2010). Most of study sites from which data archived are still in the Northern Hemisphere and the number of archived data from studies from the Southern Hemisphere and polar oceans are still relatively low. Data from 60 studies that investigated the response of a mix of organisms or natural communities were all added after 2010, indicating a welcomed shift from the study of individual organisms to communities and ecosystems. The initial imbalance of considerably more data archived on calcification and primary production than on other processes has improved. There is also a clear tendency towards more data archived from multifactorial studies after 2010. For easier and more effective access to ocean acidification data, the ocean acidification community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the data archiving effort, and help develop standard vocabularies describing the variables and define best practices for archiving ocean acidification data.

Location and ages of terrestrial peatlands located on continental shelves and in coastal sediments

This synthesis dataset contains records of freshwater peat and lake sediments from continental shelves and coastal areas. Information included is site location (when available), thickness and description of terrestrial sediments as well as underlying and overlying sediments, dates (when available), and references.