Evidence for global cooling in the Late Cretaceous

The Late Cretaceous ‘greenhouse’ world witnessed a transition from one of the warmest climates of the past 140 million years to cooler conditions, yet still without significant continental ice. Low-latitude sea surface temperature (SST) records are a vital piece of evidence required to unravel the c...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Linnert, C, Robinson, SA, Lees, JA, Bown, PR, Perez-Rodriguez, I, Petrizzo, MR, Falzoni, F, Littler, K, Antonio Arz, J, Russell, EE
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Earth sciences; Climate science; Oceanography;
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1435698/1/ncomms5194.pdf
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1435698/
Description
Summary:The Late Cretaceous ‘greenhouse’ world witnessed a transition from one of the warmest climates of the past 140 million years to cooler conditions, yet still without significant continental ice. Low-latitude sea surface temperature (SST) records are a vital piece of evidence required to unravel the cause of Late Cretaceous cooling, but high-quality data remain illusive. Here, using an organic geochemical palaeothermometer (TEX86), we present a record of SSTs for the Campanian–Maastrichtian interval (~83–66 Ma) from hemipelagic sediments deposited on the western North Atlantic shelf. Our record reveals that the North Atlantic at 35 °N was relatively warm in the earliest Campanian, with maximum SSTs of ~35 °C, but experienced significant cooling (~7 °C) after this to <~28 °C during the Maastrichtian. The overall stratigraphic trend is remarkably similar to records of high-latitude SSTs and bottom-water temperatures, suggesting that the cooling pattern was global rather than regional and, therefore, driven predominantly by declining atmospheric pCO2 levels.

Similar Items