The deglacial history of surface and intermediate water of the Bering Sea

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B. V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 52 (2005): 2163-2173, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2005.07.004.The lithology of deglacial sediments from the Bering Sea includes intervals of laminated or dysaerobic sediments. These intervals are contemporaneous with the occurrence of laminated sediments from the California margin and Gulf of California, which suggests widespread low-oxygen conditions at intermediate depths in the North Pacific Ocean. The cause could be reduced intermediate water ventilation, increased organic carbon flux, or a combination of the two. We infer abrupt decreases of planktonic foraminifer δ18O at 14,400 y BP and 11,650 y BP, which may be a combination of both freshening and warming. On the Shirshov Ridge, the abundance of sea-ice diatoms of the genus Nitzschia reach local maxima twice during the deglaciation, the latter of which may be an expression of the Younger Dryas. These findings expand the extent of the expression of deglacial millennial-scale climate events to include the northernmost Pacific.The Oak Foundation of Boston, Massachusetts, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office provided support for Mea Cook. This project was funded by NSF grant OPP-9912122