Onset of Mediterranean outflow into the North Atlantic

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: Hernández-Molina, F. Javier, Stow, Dorrik A. V., Alvarez-Zarikian, Carlos A., Acton, Gary, Bahr, André, Balestra, Barbara, Ducassou, Emmanuelle, Flood, Roger, Flores, José-Abel, Furota, Satoshi, Grunert, Patrick, Hodell, David, Jimenez-Espejo, Francisco, Kim, Jin Kyoung, Krissek, Lawrence, Kuroda, Junichiro, Li, Baohua, Llave, Estefania, Lofi, Johanna, Lourens, Lucas, Miller, Madeline, Nanayama, Futoshi, Nishida, Naohisa, Richter, Carl, Roque, Cristina, Pereira, Hélder, Sanchez Goñi, Maria Fernanda, Sierro, Francisco J., Singh, Arun Deo, Sloss, Craig, Takashimizu, Yasuhiro, Tzanova, Alexandrina, Voelker, Antje, Williams, Trevor, Xuan, Chuang
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2014
• Subjects: Multidisciplinary; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1251306; https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1251306

The when of Mediterranean water outflow The trickle of water that began to flow from the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean after the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar turned into a veritable flood by the end of the Pliocene 2 to 3 million years ago. It then began to influence large-scale ocean circulation in earnest. Hernández-Molina et al. describe marine sediment cores collected by an ocean drilling expedition (see the Perspective by Filippelli). The results reveal a detailed history of the timing of Mediterranean outflow water activity and show how the addition of that warm saline water to the cooler less-salty waters of the Atlantic was related to climate changes, deep ocean circulation, and plate tectonics. Science , this issue p. 1244 see also p. 1228