Multi-sensor global compilation of mid-Holocene sea surface temperatures, based on Mg/Ca and alkenone palaeothermometry and reconstructions obtained using planktonic foraminifera and organic-walled dinoflagellate cyst

We present and examine a multi-sensor global compilation of mid-Holocene (MH) sea surface temperatures (SST), based on Mg/Ca and alkenone palaeothermometry and reconstructions obtained using planktonic foraminifera and organic-walled dinoflagellate cyst census counts. We assess the uncertainties originating from using different methodologies and evaluate the potential of MH SST reconstructions as a benchmark for climate-model simulations. The comparison between different analytical approaches (time frame, baseline climate) shows the choice of time window for the MH has a negligible effect on the reconstructed SST pattern, but the choice of baseline climate affects both the magnitude and spatial pattern of the reconstructed SSTs. Comparison of the SST reconstructions made using different sensors shows significant discrepancies at a regional scale, with uncertainties often exceeding the reconstructed SST anomaly. Apparent patterns in SST may largely be a reflection of the use of different sensors in different regions. Overall, the uncertainties associated with the SST reconstructions are generally larger than the MH anomalies. Thus, the SST data currently available cannot serve as a target for benchmarking model simulations.

Planktonic foraminiferal Cd/Ca ratios

Records of Cd/Ca in planktonic foraminiferal calcite of Globigerinoides bulloides in cores from the Subantarctic region of the Southern Ocean show large glacial-interglacial variations with lower Cd/Ca (by 0.06-0.10 µmol/mol) at glacial times. Interpretation of these records in terms of lower dissolved phosphate and inferred higher glacial nutrient utilization has significant implications for glacial atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2) draw-down. However, box core-top data for G. bulloides in the North Atlantic suggest that the incorporation of Cd into planktonic foraminifera relative to seawater (DCd) is temperature sensitive (DCd=0.637 exp 0.15T). When the Subantarctic planktonic Cd/Ca records are corrected for this temperature dependence, they show little or no glacial-interglacial diferences. If, as seems likely, this observation can be interpreted to indicate a minimal change (< 0.5 µmol/kg) in surface water phosphate concentrations, then the explanation for lowered glacial pCO2 must be looked for elsewhere.

Stable isotope record, Mg/Ca ratios and age model of St. Stephens Quarry, Alabama

In the largest global cooling event of the Cenozoic Era, between 33.8 and 33.5 Myr ago, warm, high-CO2 conditions gave way to the variable 'icehouse' climates that prevail today. Despite intense study, the history of cooling versus ice-sheet growth and sea-level fall reconstructed from oxygen isotope values in marine sediments at the transition has not been resolved. Here, we analyse oxygen isotopes and Mg/Ca ratios of benthic foraminifera, and integrate the results with the stratigraphic record of sea-level change across the Eocene-Oligocene transition from a continental-shelf site at Saint Stephens Quarry, Alabama. Comparisons with deep-sea (Sites 522 (South Atlantic) and 1218 (Pacific)) d18O and Mg/Ca records enable us to reconstruct temperature, ice-volume and sea-level changes across the climate transition. Our records show that the transition occurred in at least three distinct steps, with an increasing influence of ice volume on the oxygen isotope record as the transition progressed. By the early Oligocene, ice sheets were ~25% larger than present. This growth was associated with a relative sea-level decrease of approximately 105 m, which equates to a 67 m eustatic fall.