The Atlantic Ocean at the last glacial maximum: 1. Objective mapping of the GLAMAP sea-surface conditions

• Main Authors: Schäfer-Neth, Christian, Paul, A.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/12173/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/12173/1/Sch2003df.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.22606; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.22606.d001

Recent efforts of the German paleoceanographic community have resulted in a unique data set of reconstructed sea-surface temperature for the Atlantic Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum, plus estimates for the extents of glacial sea ice. Unlike prior attempts, the contributing research groups based their data on a common definition of the Last Glacial Maximum chronozone and used the same modern reference data for calibrating the different transfer techniques. Furthermore, the number of processed sediment cores was vastly increased. Thus the new data is a significant advance not only with respect to quality, but also to quantity. We integrate these new data and provide monthly data sets of global sea-surface temperature and ice cover, objectively interpolated onto a regular 1°x1° grid, suitable for forcing or validating numerical ocean and atmosphere models. This set is compared to an existing subjective interpolation of the same base data, in part by employing an ocean circulation model. For the latter purpose, we reconstruct sea surface salinity from the new temperature data and the available oxygen isotope measurements.