The relationships among internally consistent records of summer sea-surface temperature (SSST), winter sea
ice (WSI), and diatomaceous stable isotopes were studied across seven terminations over the last 660 ka in
sedimentary cores from ODP sites 1093 and 1094. The sequence of events at both sites indicates that SSST
and WSI changes led the carbon and nitrogen isotopic changes in three Terminations (TI, TII and TVI) and followed
them in the other four Terminations (TIII, TIV, TV and TVII). In both TIII and TIV, the leads and lags between
the proxies were related to weak glacial mode, while in TV and TVII they were due to the influence of
the mid-Pleistocene transition. We show that the sequence of events is not unique and does not follow the
same pattern across terminations, implying that the processes that initiated climate change in the Southern
Ocean has varied through time