Mediterranean Sea Surface Radiocarbon Reservoir Age Changes Since the Last Glacial Maximum

Sea surface reservoir ages must be known to establish a common chronological framework for marine, continental, and cryospheric paleoproxies, and are crucial for understanding ocean-continent climatic relationships and the paleoventilation of the ocean. Radiocarbon dates of planktonic foraminifera a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Siani, Giuseppe, Paterne, Martine, Michel, Elisabeth, Sulpizio, Roberto, Sbrana, Alessandro, Arnold, Maurice, Haddad, Geoffrey
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2001
Subjects:
North Atlantic
North atlantic Thermohaline circulation
Planktonic foraminifera
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1063649
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1063649
Description
Summary:Sea surface reservoir ages must be known to establish a common chronological framework for marine, continental, and cryospheric paleoproxies, and are crucial for understanding ocean-continent climatic relationships and the paleoventilation of the ocean. Radiocarbon dates of planktonic foraminifera and tephra contemporaneously deposited over Mediterranean marine and terrestrial regions reveal that the reservoir ages were similar to the modern one (∼400 years) during most of the past 18,000 carbon-14 years. However, reservoir ages increased by a factor of 2 at the beginning of the last deglaciation. This is attributed to changes of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation during the massive ice discharge event Heinrich 1.

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