P211-TU AFRICAN HYDROLOGY, SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE AND ORGANIC CARBON BURIAL OFF EQUATORIAL WEST-AFRICA ACROSS THE LATE MIOCENE TO EARLY PLIOCENE CLIMATE TRANSITION. FIRST RESULTS FROM ODP SITE 959
Assessing the processes and feedbacks of the water cycle and its relationship to continental vegetation, weathering, runoff, and the surface and deep ocean has become one of the key objectives of current climate research. In this new project we plan to explore short term swings in organic carbon at...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.539.3589 http://www.imog2007.org/files/Tuesday Posters/Tuesday Posters Palaeoclimate/P211-TU Eniola.pdf |
| Summary: | Assessing the processes and feedbacks of the water cycle and its relationship to continental vegetation, weathering, runoff, and the surface and deep ocean has become one of the key objectives of current climate research. In this new project we plan to explore short term swings in organic carbon at OPD Site 959 from the Deep Ivorian Basin (DIB) off Equatorial West-Africa with respect to the initial onset of upwelling processes off equatorial West-Africa at about 5.5 Ma and associated feedbacks. To further explore a millennial-scale TOC record we combine alkenone-based UK37-SST data and coupled hydrogen and carbon isotope signatures of plant leaf waxes (long-chain, odd-numbered C25 to C35 n-alkanes and alkanoic acids) aiming to provide an integrated view on the processes, feedbacks, and time relationships of the tropical climate-ocean system and thus tropical African hydrology and vegetation change at about 6-4 Ma. The late Miocene–early Pliocene interval (11-3.5 Ma) was a period of major transition in global climate, vegetation, and ocean circulation. In particular, modern thermohaline and atmospheric circulation patterns were established with a source of warm, nutrient depleted deep waters originating in the North Atlantic (Berger and Wefer, 1996), short term but low amplitude fluctuations in atmospheric pCO2 and hydrology (Pagani et al. 1999; Pagani pers. communication August 06), and the establishment of modern-type atmospheric and ocean circulation in the tropics at about 4.5-4.3 Ma (Billups et |
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