Asynchronous warming and δ18O evolution of deep Atlantic water masses during the last deglaciation

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Main Authors: Zhang, Jiaxu, Liu, Zhengyu, Brady, Esther C., Oppo, Delia W., Clark, Peter U., Jahn, Alexandra, Marcott, Shaun A., Lindsay, Keith
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: National Academy of Sciences 2017
• Subjects: Physical Sciences; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5651742/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28973944; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704512114

The reorganizations of deep Atlantic water masses are widely thought to regulate glacial–interglacial climate changes. However, the pattern of reorganizations and their impact on ocean tracer transport remain poorly constrained by marine proxies. Our modeling study, which simulates the coevolution of water masses and oxygen isotopes during the last deglaciation, suggests that deglacial meltwater input causes both northern- and southern-sourced deep water transports to decrease. This reorganization pattern leads to asynchronous warming between the deep North and South Atlantic, which might have caused the observed deglacial phasing difference in deep water oxygen isotope records between these ocean basins. We further propose a mechanism to explain the early warming in the northern North Atlantic.