Indian Ocean Circulation and Productivity during the Last Glacial Cycle

The Indian Ocean is an important part of the global thermohaline circulation system, receiving deep waters sourced from the Southern Ocean and being the location of upwelling and surface-ocean current flow, which returns warm and salty waters to the Atlantic. It is also an ideal location to reconstr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Er M. Piotrowski, Virupaxa K. Banakar, Adam E. Scrivner, Albert Galy, Aileen Dennis
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.581.4729
http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/2264/3372/1/Earth_Planet_Sci_Lett_285_179a.pdf
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Summary:The Indian Ocean is an important part of the global thermohaline circulation system, receiving deep waters sourced from the Southern Ocean and being the location of upwelling and surface-ocean current flow, which returns warm and salty waters to the Atlantic. It is also an ideal location to reconstruct the link between thermohaline circulation and deep-water nutrient contents. No mixing occurs between major deep-water masses along flow paths within the Indian Ocean, so changes in water-mass provenance reflect changes in deep-ocean circulation while nutrient contents reflect addition and dissolution of organic matter. We present neodymium (Nd) and carbon (C) isotope records, proxies of water-mass provenance and nutrient contents, respectively, from an equatorial Indian Ocean core (SK129−CR2) spanning the last 150 kyr. The Nd isotope record shows that an increased proportion of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) reached the Indian Ocean during interglacials (marine isotope stages, MIS 1 and 5), and a reduced proportion during glacials (MIS 2, 4, and 6), and also that changes occurred during MIS 3. The magnitude and timing of deglacial and some MIS 3 variability is very similar to those in the RC11−83/TNO57−21 South Atlantic deep Cape Basin Nd isotope record, suggesting