Deepwater Formation in the North Pacific During the Last Glacial Termination

Switching Basins Most of the densest, deepest water at the bottom of the oceans comes from two regions, the North Atlantic and the circum-Antarctic. Have other regions been able to produce significant quantities of deep water in the past? For decades, researchers have looked, with limited success, f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Okazaki, Y., Timmermann, A., Menviel, L., Harada, N., Abe-Ouchi, A., Chikamoto, M. O., Mouchet, A., Asahi, H.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2010
Subjects:
Antarc*
Antarctic
North Atlantic
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1190612
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1190612
Description
Summary:Switching Basins Most of the densest, deepest water at the bottom of the oceans comes from two regions, the North Atlantic and the circum-Antarctic. Have other regions been able to produce significant quantities of deep water in the past? For decades, researchers have looked, with limited success, for evidence of deepwater formation in the North Pacific since the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 23,000 years ago. Okazaki et al. (p. 200 ) combine published observational evidence from the North Pacific with model simulations to suggest that deep water did form in the North Pacific during the early part of the Last Glacial Termination, between about 17,500 and 15,000 years ago. The switch between deep-water formation in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific is likely to have had an important effect on heat transport and climate.

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