Surface-ocean variability in the northern Gulf of Mexico during the late Holocene

The surface waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) are a major moisture source for North America and play an important role in modulating the hydroclimate of the region. Predictions of future changes in surface-ocean variability in the GOM and hydroclimatic changes in response to greenhouse gas forcing must be placed in context of past changes. However, the instrumental record of sea-surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS) observations in the GOM is too brief to examine climate variability on multidecadal-to-centennial timescales; thus, proxy records of SST and SSS variability as encoded in marine sedimentary archives must be used to extract information about climate change on these timescales. In this work, I produce a near-decadal-resolution record of SST and SSS variability in the northern GOM over the last 4,400 years. These paleo-records are based on the measurement of the stable isotopic and trace metal composition of planktic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber (White) shells in a suite of multicores from the Garrison Basin, northern GOM (26º 40.19’N,93º 55.22’W). The fidelity of this proxy is assessed by performing geochemical measurements on in-situ samples from a nearby sediment trap and by performing statistical data-model comparisons with a foraminiferal forward model that can simulate different calcification depth habitats and seasonal productivity. Next, I construct a computational algorithm that characterizes uncertainty in foraminiferal reconstructions including age, analytical, calibration, ecological, sampling, and preservation errors. The utility of this algorithm is shown by applying it to several previously published records. It is also used to place the new Garrison Basin SST and SSS reconstructions in a quantitative uncertainty framework. I diagnose the controls of multidecadal-to-centennial-scale SST and SSS variability in the GOM (and establish its relationship with Atlantic Ocean circulation) by performing correlation analyses using observations, reanalysis datasets, and transient models. Several other marine and terrestrial proxy records spanning the last millennium are synthesized to document a coordinated linkage between Atlantic Ocean circulation and Western Hemisphere precipitation. This work hypothesizes that a century-scale linkage between ocean circulation and precipitation variability occurred over the last millennium, and perhaps the late Holocene, thereby providing a new perspective on long-term climate change.Geological Science

Shell reworking impacts on climate variability reconstructions using individual foraminiferal analyses

Particle mixing by benthic fauna beneath the sediment‐water interface (or bioturbation) fundamentally challenges the proxy based retrieval of past climatic conditions from deep‐sea sediment cores. Previous efforts targeted the impacts of bioturbation on the nature of paleoceanographic changes gleaned from the proxy record, whereas impacts on seasonal and/or interannual variability reconstructions have received less attention. We present TurbIFA (Tracking uncertainty of reworking & bioturbation on IFA), a software that adapts and combines existing algorithms to quantitatively estimate the impact of sediment reworking and other uncertainties and assess significance of ocean and climate variability reconstructions based on individual foraminiferal analyses (IFA). Building upon previous idealized investigations of bioturbation using hydroclimate‐sediment simulations, TurbIFA advances the IFA proxy system modeling such that users may directly assess the sensitivity of their data to various local parameters related to shell reworking across the global ocean. Using the output of state‐of‐the‐art coupled atmosphere‐ocean general circulation models, TurbIFA simulates planktic foraminiferal δ 18 O or Mg/Ca‐temperature signal carriers and evaluates uncertainties in the sample size, analytical protocols along with as those arising from bioturbation. Application of TurbIFA to synthetic and existing data sets indicates that the significance of IFA‐based reconstructions can be assessed once the impacts of sediment accumulation rates, sediment mixed layer depths, length of time integrated by the chosen IFA sampling interval, and changes in the amplitude of climate variability (i.e., the targeted environmental signal) are comprehensively evaluated. We contend that TurbIFA can aid quantitative assessments of past seasonal and interannual variability gleaned from the paleoceanographic record.Universidade de Vigo/CISUGMinisterio de Universidades | Ref. BG20-00157Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2019‐109653RB‐10

Connecting Paleo and Modern Oceanographic Data to Understand Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Over Decades to Centuries

Modeling is an important tool for understanding AMOC on all timescales. Mechanistic studies of modern AMOC variability have been hampered by a lack of consistency between free-running models and the sensitivity of AMOC to resolution and parameterization. Recent work within the framework of the phase two Coordinated Ocean- Reference Experiments (CORE-II) addresses this issue head on, looking at model differences of AMOC mean state and interannual variability. One consistent feature across the models is that AMOC mean transport is related to mixed layer depths and Labrador Sea salt content, whereas interannual variability is primarily associated with Labrador Sea temperature anomalies. This is consistent with the hypothesized importance of salt balance for AMOC variability on geological timescales. The simulated relationships between AMOC and subsurface temperature anomalies in fully coupled climate models reveal subsurface AMOC fingerprints that could be used to reconstruct historical AMOC variations at low frequency.With the lack of long-term AMOC observations, models of ocean state that assimilate observational data have been explored as a way to reconstruct AMOC, but comparisons between models indicate they are quite variable in their AMOC representations. Karspeck et al. (2015) found that historical reconstructions of AMOC in such models are sensitive to the details of the data assimilation procedure. The ocean data assimilation community continues to address these issues through improved models and methods for estimating and representing error information.Two objectives of paleoclimate modeling are 1) to provide mechanistic information for interpretation of paleoclimate observations, and 2) to test the ability of predictive models to simulate Earth's climate under different background forcing states. In a good example of the first objective, Schmittner and Lund (2015) and Menviel et al. (2014) provided key information about the proxy signals expected under freshwater disturbance of AMOC, which were used to support the paleoclimate observations made by Henry et al. (2016). In an example of the second objective, Muglia and Schmittner (2015) analyzed Third Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP3) models of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and found consistently more intense and deeper AMOC transports relative to preindustrial simulations, counter to the paleoclimate consensus of LGM conditions, indicating that some processes are not well represented in the PMIP3 models. One challenge is to find adequate paleo observations against which to test these models. PMIP is now in phase 4 (part of CMIP6), which includes experiments covering five periods in Earth's history: the last millennium, last glacial maximum, last interglacial, and the mid-Pliocene. Newly compiled paleoclimate datasets from the PAGES2k project, more transient simulations, and participation of isotope enabled models planned for CMIP6PMIP4 will enable richer paleo data-model comparisons in the near future

Remote and local drivers of Pleistocene South Asian summer monsoon precipitation: A test for future predictions

South Asian precipitation amount and extreme variability are predicted to increase due to thermodynamic effects of increased 21st-century greenhouse gases, accompanied by an increased supply of moisture from the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean. We reconstructed South Asian summer-monsoon precipitation and runoff into the Bay of Bengal to assess the extent to which these factors also operated in the Pleistocene, a time of large-scale natural changes in carbon dioxide and ice volume. South Asian precipitation and runoff are strongly coherent with, and lag, atmospheric CO2 changes at Earth-orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession bands and are closely tied to cross-equatorial wind strength at the precession band. We find that the projected monsoon response to ongoing, rapid high-latitude ice melt and rising CO2 levels is fully consistent with dynamics of the past 0.9 million years

A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era

Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature- sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850–2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high- and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python

The PhanSST global database of Phanerozoic sea surface temperature proxy data

Paleotemperature proxy data form the cornerstone of paleoclimate research and are integral to understanding the evolution of the Earth system across the Phanerozoic Eon. Here, we present PhanSST, a database containing over 150,000 data points from five proxy systems that can be used to estimate past sea surface temperature. The geochemical data have a near-global spatial distribution and temporally span most of the Phanerozoic. Each proxy value is associated with consistent and queryable metadata fields, including information about the location, age, and taxonomy of the organism from which the data derive. To promote transparency and reproducibility, we include all available published data, regardless of interpreted preservation state or vital effects. However, we also provide expert-assigned diagenetic assessments, ecological and environmental flags, and other proxy-specific fields, which facilitate informed and responsible reuse of the database. The data are quality control checked and the foraminiferal taxonomy has been updated. PhanSST will serve as a valuable resource to the paleoclimate community and has myriad applications, including evolutionary, geochemical, diagenetic, and proxy calibration studies

The PhanSST global database of Phanerozoic sea surface temperature proxy data

Paleotemperature proxy data form the cornerstone of paleoclimate research and are integral to understanding the evolution of the Earth system across the Phanerozoic Eon. Here, we present PhanSST, a database containing over 150,000 data points from five proxy systems that can be used to estimate past sea surface temperature. The geochemical data have a near-global spatial distribution and temporally span most of the Phanerozoic. Each proxy value is associated with consistent and queryable metadata fields, including information about the location, age, and taxonomy of the organism from which the data derive. To promote transparency and reproducibility, we include all available published data, regardless of interpreted preservation state or vital effects. However, we also provide expert-assigned diagenetic assessments, ecological and environmental flags, and other proxy-specific fields, which facilitate informed and responsible reuse of the database. The data are quality control checked and the foraminiferal taxonomy has been updated. PhanSST will serve as a valuable resource to the paleoclimate community and has myriad applications, including evolutionary, geochemical, diagenetic, and proxy calibration studies

Statistical constraints on El Niño Southern Oscillation reconstructions using individual foraminiferal analyses

textRecent scientific investigations of sub-millennial paleoceanographic variability have attempted to use the population statistics of single planktic foraminiferal δ18O in an attempt to characterize the variability of high-frequency signals such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). However, this approach is complicated by the relatively short lifespan of individual foraminifera (~2-4 weeks) compared to the time represented by a sediment sample of a marine core (decades to millennia). The resolving ability of individual foraminiferal analyses (IFA) is investigated through simulations on an idealized virtual sediment sample. We focus on ENSO-related sea-surface temperatures (SST) anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean (Niño3.4 region). We constrain uncertainties on the range and standard deviation associated with the IFA technique using a bootstrap Monte Carlo approach. Sensitivity to changes in ENSO amplitude and frequency and the influence of the seasonal cycle on IFA are investigated through the construction of synthetic time series containing different characteristics of variability. We find that the standard deviation and range of the population of individual foraminiferal δ18O may be used to detect ENSO amplitude changes at particular thresholds (though the uncertainty in range is much larger than in standard deviation); however, it is highly improbable that IFA can resolve changes in ENSO frequency. We also determine that the main driver of the IFA signal is ENSO amplitude as opposed to changes in the seasonal cycle although this is specific to Niño3.4 where the SST response to ENSO is maximal. Our results suggest that rigorous uncertainty analysis is crucial to the proper interpretation of IFA data and should become a standard in individual foraminiferal studies.Geological Science

Geochemical and morphometric measurements of individual planktic foraminiferal tests from the eastern tropical Indian Ocean, Ninetyeast Ridge

<p>These two spreadsheets present geochemical (δ¹⁸O, δ¹³C, Mg/Ca) and morphometric (mass, L1, and L2) measurements of individual shells belonging to various species of planktic foraminifera from the Ninetyeast Ridge in the Indian Ocean from uppermost sediments (2-3cm) at core site RC14-36 (0.465°N, 89.995°E, 3076 m water depth) and V34-57 (6.417°S, 89.017°E, 2191 m water depth). </p&gt

A MATLAB<SUP>TM</SUP> code to perform weighted linear regression with (correlated or uncorrelated) errors in bivariate data

MATLAB<SUP>TM</SUP> is a powerful, easy to use, software package suitable for many mathematical operations, which finds plenty of scientific applications. One such application is the fitting of trend lines for a given data set so as to interpret the relationship of the variance of the parameters involved. We provide here a code in MATLAB<SUP>TM </SUP>that performs the weighted linear regression with (correlated or uncorrelated) errors in bivariate data which can handle 'force-fit' regression as well