Extralimital Senegalese species during Marine Isotope Stages 5.5 and 11 in the Canary Islands (29° N): Sea surface temperature estimates

The presence of Harpa doris Röding, 1798 in marine deposits of the last interglacial period, ~130-120 ka (marine isotope stage or MIS 5.5) in the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura) enabled us to compare this occurrence with its present habitat in the Gulf of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands, well to the south. This comparison leads to the conclusion that sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the waters around the Canary Islands during the last interglacial period were at least 3.3 °C higher than today. H. doris is found in association with the large gastropod Persististrombus latus (Gmelin, 1791) as well as the coral Siderastrea radians (Pallas, 1766). The presence of these extralimital southern,warm-water species in the Canary Islands during the last interglacial period also implies a northward expansion of plankton-feeding larvae in seawater with a high chlorophyll-a content. Such conditionswould require a shortening of the southern arm of the cool Canary Current that dominates the waters around the Canary Islands at present. Marine deposits dating to ~400 ka (MIS 11) are also found on the Canary Islands. In these deposits, the presence of Saccostrea cucullata (Born, 1778) allows a comparison with its present habitat in the Gulf of Guinea. In this analysis, we conclude that SSTs in waters around the Canary Islands during this major interglacial period were at least 4.2 °C higher than today. Middle Pleistocene fossils of S. cucullata have also been found in the western Mediterranean Sea and Morocco, as well as the Cape Verde Islands. If these deposits also date to MIS 11, SST warming could have been a regional phenomenon, including much of the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.

(Table 1) Age determination of ODP Sites 124-769 and 124-768

The Sulu Sea is located in the 'warm pool' of the western Pacific Ocean, where mean annual temperatures are the highest of anywhere on Earth. Because this large heat source supplies the atmosphere with a significant portion of its water vapour and latent heat, understanding the climate history of the region is important for reconstructing global palaeoclimate and for predicting future climate change. Changes in the oxygen isotope composition of planktonic foraminifera from Sulu Sea sediments have previously been shown to reflect changes in the planetary ice volume at glacial-interglacial and millenial timeseales, and such records have been obtained for the late Pleistocene epoch and the last deglaciation (Linsley and Thunell, 1990, doi:10.1029/PA005i006p01025; Lindley and Dunbar, 1994, doi:10.1029/93PA03216; Kudrass et al., 1991, doi:10.1038/349406a0). Here I present results that extend the millenial time resolution record back to 150,000 years before present. On timescales of around 10,000 years, the Sulu Sea oxygen-isotope record matches changes in sea level deduced from coral terraces on the Huon peninsula (Chappell and Shackleton, doi:10.1038/324137a0). This is particularly the case during isotope stage 3 (an interglacial period 23,000 to 58,000 years ago) where the Sulu Sea oxygen-isotope record deviates from the SPECMAP deep-ocean oxygen-isotope record (Imbrie et al., 1984). Thus these results support the idea (Chappell and Shackleton, doi:10.1038/324137a0; Shackleton, 1987, doi:10.1016/0277-3791(87)90003-5) that there were higher sea levels and less continental ice during stage 3 than the SPECMAP record implies and that sea level during this interglacial was just 40-50 metres below present levels. The subsequent rate of increase in continental ice volume during the return to full glacial conditions was correspondingly faster than previously thought.