Increased nutrient supply to the Southern Ocean during the Holocene and its implications for the pre-industrial atmospheric CO_2 rise

• Published in: Nature Geoscience
• Main Authors: Studer, Anja S., Sigman, Daniel M., Martínez-García, Alfredo, Thöle, Lena M., Michel, Elisabeth, Jaccard, Samuel L., Lippold, Jörg A., Mazaud, Alain, Wang, Xingchen T., Robinson, Laura F., Adkins, Jess F., Haug, Gerald H.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2018
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; North Atlantic Deep Water; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0191-8

A rise in the atmospheric CO_2 concentration of ~20 parts per million over the course of the Holocene has long been recognized as exceptional among interglacials and is in need of explanation. Previous hypotheses involved natural or anthropogenic changes in terrestrial biomass, carbonate compensation in response to deglacial outgassing of oceanic CO_2, and enhanced shallow water carbonate deposition. Here, we compile new and previously published fossil-bound nitrogen isotope records from the Southern Ocean that indicate a rise in surface nitrate concentration through the Holocene. When coupled with increasing or constant export production, these data suggest an acceleration of nitrate supply to the Southern Ocean surface from underlying deep water. This change would have weakened the ocean's biological pump that stores CO_2 in the ocean interior, possibly explaining the Holocene atmospheric CO_2 rise. Over the Holocene, the circum-North Atlantic region cooled, and the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water appears to have slowed. Thus, the 'seesaw' in deep ocean ventilation between the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean that has been invoked for millennial-scale events, deglaciations and the last interglacial period may have also operated, albeit in a more gradual form, over the Holocene. © 2018 Springer Nature. Received: 23 January 2017; Accepted: 26 June 2018; Published: 30 July 2018. This study was supported by Swiss NSF grant PBEZP2_145695 to A.S.S., US NSF grants 1401489 and 1234664 to D.M.S., Swiss NSF grant PZ00P2_142424 to A.M.-G., grants PP00P2-144811 and PP00P2_172915 to S.L.J., by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through grant Li1815/4 to J.A.L., by funding from the Swedish Research Council VR-349-2012-6278 to E.M., from the Natural Environment Research Council NE/N003861/1 to L.F.R., and from the French INSU/LEFE Indien Sud to A.M. This research was also supported by ExxonMobil through the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University and by the Grand Challenges ...