Natural variation of pelagic carbonate production during Cenozoic warm periods ...

• Main Author: CORNUAULT, Pauline
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Universität Bremen 2023
• Subjects: climate variability; carbonate production; paleoceanography; warm climates; microfossils; Cenozoic; 550; Planktonic foraminifera
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.26092/elib/2651; https://media.suub.uni-bremen.de/handle/elib/7427

The biological carbon uptake, called biological compensation, have been shown to have a huge potential to affect the capacity of the ocean to absorb (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide, and so equilibrate the global carbon budget and hence climate. Since the pelagic calcite flux is made of two fundamentally different components, coccolithophore algae and planktonic foraminifera, understanding of the process of biological compensation requires knowledge of variability of their relative contribution to the total pelagic calcite flux. The aspects of the pelagic carbonate production that have changed through time and the mechanisms explaining the observed carbonate flux variability remain, despite their importance, largely unconstrained. In order to evaluate the orbital and long geological time scale variability of the pelagic carbonate production, I generated new high-resolution records of carbonate accumulation rate, using marine sediments deposited in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean (Ceará Rise) at ODP Site 927, ...