Late Miocene-early Pliocene stable isotope record of benthic foraminifera from ODP Site 177-1088 in the sub-Antarctic South Atlantic

Benthic foraminiferal stable isotope records for the past 11 Myr from a recently drilled site in the sub-Antarctic South Atlantic (Site 1088, Ocean Drilling Program Leg 177, 41°S, 15°E, 2082 m water depth) provide, for the first time, a continuous long-term perspective on deep water distribution patterns and Southern Ocean climate change from the late Miocene through the early Pliocene. I have compiled published late Miocene through Pliocene stable isotope records to place the new South Atlantic record in a global framework. Carbon isotope gradients between the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Pacific indicate that a nutrient-depleted watermass, probably of North Atlantic origin, reached the sub-Antarctic South Atlantic after 6.6 Ma. By 6.0 Ma the relative proportion of the northern-provenance watermass was similar to today and by the early Pliocene it had increased to greater than the modern proportion suggesting that thermohaline overturn in the Atlantic was relatively strong prior to the early Pliocene interval of inferred climatic warmth. Site 1088 oxygen isotope values display a two-step increase between ~7.4 Ma and 6.9 Ma, a trend that parallels a published delta18O record of a site on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. This is perhaps best explained by a gradual cooling of watermasses that were sinking in the Southern Ocean. I speculate that relatively strong thermohaline overturn at rates comparable to the present day interglacial interval during the latest Miocene may have provided the initial conditions for early Pliocene climatic warmth. The impact of an emerging Central American Seaway on Atlantic-Pacific Ocean upper water exchange may have been felt in the North Atlantic beginning in the latest Miocene between 6.6 and 6.0 Ma, which would be ~1.5 Myr earlier than previously thought.

Accumulation rates of ODP Site 177-1090

Dust has the potential to modify global climate by influencing the radiative balance of the atmosphere and by supplying iron and other essential limiting micronutrients to the ocean (Martin et al., 1990, doi:10.1038/345156a0; Martin, 1990, doi:10.1029/PA005i001p00001). Indeed, dust supply to the Southern Ocean increases during ice ages, and 'iron fertilization' of the subantarctic zone may have contributed up to 40 parts per million by volume (p.p.m.v.) of the decrease (80-100 p.p.m.v.) in atmospheric carbon dioxide observed during late Pleistocene glacial cycles (Watson et al., 2000, doi:10.1038/35037561; Kohfeld et al., 2005, doi:10.1126/science.1105375; Martínez-Garcia et al., 2009, doi:10.1029/2008PA001657; Sigman et al., 2010, doi:10.1038/nature09149; Hain et al., 2010, doi:10.1029/2010gb003790). So far, however, the magnitude of Southern Ocean dust deposition in earlier times and its role in the development and evolution of Pleistocene glacial cycles have remained unclear. Here we report a high-resolution record of dust and iron supply to the Southern Ocean over the past four million years, derived from the analysis of marine sediments from ODP Site 1090, located in the Atlantic sector of the subantarctic zone. The close correspondence of our dust and iron deposition records with Antarctic ice core reconstructions of dust flux covering the past 800,000 years (Lambert et al., 2008, doi:10.1038/nature06763; Wolf et al., 2006, doi:10.1038/nature04614) indicates that both of these archives record large-scale deposition changes that should apply to most of the Southern Ocean, validating previous interpretations of the ice core data. The extension of the record beyond the interval covered by the Antarctic ice cores reveals that, in contrast to the relatively gradual intensification of glacial cycles over the past three million years, Southern Ocean dust and iron flux rose sharply at the Mid-Pleistocene climatic transition around 1.25 million years ago. This finding complements previous observations over late Pleistocene glacial cycles (Martínez-Garcia et al., 2009; Lambert et al., 2008; Wolff et al., 2006), providing new evidence of a tight connection between high dust input to the Southern Ocean and the emergence of the deep glaciations that characterize the past one million years of Earth history.

Stable oxygen isotope record of Neogloboquadrina pachyderma of ODP Sites 177-1091 and 177-1094

Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) cores permit us to extend the study of millennial-scale climate variability beyond the time period that is generally accessible for piston cores (i.e., the last glacial cycle). ODP Leg 177 provided for the first time continuous high sedimentation rate cores along a north-south transect from 41°to 53°S across the main subdivisions of the Southern Ocean (Shipboard Scientific Party, 1999, doi:10.2973/odp.proc.ir.177.101.1999). The main purpose of this drilling was to investigate the Pleistocene and Holocene paleoceanographic history of this region, documented in the sedimentary records. ODP Sites 1094, 1093, 1091, and 1089 accumulated throughout the Pleistocene at rates >10 cm/k.y. and are the most detailed Pleistocene climatic records ever retrieved from the Southern Ocean. These sections provide a unique opportunity to fill an important gap in the knowledge of the paleoclimatic evolution of the high southern latitude regions. The composite sections at each site were generated shipboard using magnetic susceptibility, gamma ray attenuation (GRA) density, and reflectance data to correlate the drill holes and splice together an optimal (complete and undisturbed) record of the sedimentary sequence at each site. A preliminary magnetic polarity stratigraphy was generated on the 'archive' halves of the core sections from each hole, using the shipboard pass-through magnetometer after demagnetization at a single peak alternating field (Shipboard Scientific Party, 1999). During July 1998, we sampled core sections spanning the mid-Pleistocene interval (0.65-1.2 Ma) from Sites 1094, 1093, and 1091 at the ODP Bremen Core Repository and have since then analyzed the stable isotopic ratios of foraminifers in samples from Sites 1094 and 1091. Our goals for these studies are to establish detailed chronology for the mid-Pleistocene Southern Ocean records from Leg 177 using high-resolution stable isotope analyses, and furthermore, to trace the evolution of millennial-scale variability in proxy records from older glacial and interglacial periods characterized by higher-frequency variation. Here, we report on our stratigraphic results to date and describe the laboratory methods employed for sample preparation and stable isotope analysis. Furthermore, we provide tab-delimited text files of the age models.