North Atlantic Paleoceanography from Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expeditions (2003-2013)

• Main Authors: Channell, James E. T., Hodell, David A.
• Other Authors: Stein, Ruediger, Blackman, Donna K., Inagaki, Fumio, Larsen, Hans-Christian
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2014
• Subjects: 01 - Climate Change and Earth-Ocean Atmosphere Systems; Antarctic; Greenland; Pacific; Antarc*; Newfoundland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://eprints.esc.cam.ac.uk/3234/; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444626172000141

Paleoceanographic objectives launched three Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expeditions to the North Atlantic during the 2003-2013 decade. Expedition 303/306 (2004/2005) was designed to recover archives of Quaternary climate from relatively high-deposition-rate sediments within the North Atlantic ice-rafted debris (IRD) belt and from regions outside the IRD belt sensitive to orbital and millennial paleoceanographic change. The stratigraphic challenge of correlating millennial-scale features among sites has been addressed through a combination of oxygen isotope and relative (geomagnetic) paleointensity data. Expedition 339 (2011/2012) to the SW Iberian Margin had dual objectives of: (1) monitoring the sedimentological (contourite) record and climatic consequences of Mediterranean Outflow after the Messinian salinity crisis and (2) establishing a Quaternary paleoceanographic reference record at a location sensitive to both northern (Greenland) and Antarctic climate signals through surface- and deepwater proxies. Expedition 342 (2012) was designed to exploit Cretaceous and Paleogene sedimentary archives off Newfoundland, for comparison with records of this time interval from the Pacific and South Atlantic, in order to monitor the Atlantic response to Paleocene-Eocene greenhouse climate and the subsequent transition into cooler Oligocene conditions.