A 600 kyr reconstruction of deep Arctic seawater δ 18 O from benthic foraminiferal δ 18 O and ostracode Mg ∕ Ca paleothermometry

The oxygen isotopic composition of benthic foraminiferal tests ( δ 18 O b ) is one of the pre-eminent tools for correlating marine sediments and interpreting past terrestrial ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures. Despite the prevalence of δ 18 O b applications to marine sediment cores over the Qua...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climate of the Past
Main Authors: J. R. Farmer, K. J. Keller, R. K. Poirier, G. S. Dwyer, M. F. Schaller, H. K. Coxall, M. O'Regan, T. M. Cronin
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-555-2023
https://doaj.org/article/3edbc8f0c8ba405b83658f7b461196df
Description
Summary:The oxygen isotopic composition of benthic foraminiferal tests ( δ 18 O b ) is one of the pre-eminent tools for correlating marine sediments and interpreting past terrestrial ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures. Despite the prevalence of δ 18 O b applications to marine sediment cores over the Quaternary, its use is limited in the Arctic Ocean because of low benthic foraminiferal abundances, challenges with constructing independent sediment core age models, and an apparent muted amplitude of Arctic δ 18 O b variability compared to open-ocean records. Here we evaluate the controls on Arctic δ 18 O b by using ostracode <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M14" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><mrow class="chem"><mi mathvariant="normal">Mg</mi></mrow><mo>/</mo><mrow class="chem"><mi mathvariant="normal">Ca</mi></mrow></mrow></math> <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="37pt" height="14pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="1e3d1d11bbe5435973a8908703b160da"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="cp-19-555-2023-ie00003.svg" width="37pt" height="14pt" src="cp-19-555-2023-ie00003.png"/></svg:svg> paleothermometry to generate a composite record of the δ 18 O of seawater ( δ 18 O sw ) from 12 sediment cores in the intermediate to deep Arctic Ocean (700–2700 m) that covers the last 600 kyr based on biostratigraphy and orbitally tuned age models. Results show that Arctic δ 18 O b was generally higher than open-ocean δ 18 O b during interglacials but was generally equivalent to global reference records during glacial periods. The reduced glacial–interglacial Arctic δ 18 O b range resulted in part from the opposing effect of temperature, with intermediate to deep Arctic warming during glacials counteracting the whole-ocean δ 18 O sw increase from expanded terrestrial ice sheets. After removing the temperature effect from δ 18 O ...