Tracing time in the ocean: a brief review of chronological constraints (60-8 kyr) on North Atlantic marine event-based stratigraphies

• Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews
• Main Authors: Austin, William E. N., Hibbert, Fiona D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Greenland; Lowe; Greenland ice cores; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/researchoutput/tracing-time-in-the-ocean-a-brief-review-of-chronological-constraints-608-kyr-on-north-atlantic-marine-eventbased-stratigraphies(985ed400-3fbe-4072-b190-e695f4acd0df).html; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.01.015

Well-resolved event-based stratigraphies in marine sediments spanning a significant portion of the last glacial period (60-8 kyr) provide a unique opportunity for time-stratigraphic correlation in the North Atlantic region. Here, we review the current methods available to chronologically constrain these event-based stratigraphies, highlighting, in particular, the value of tephrochronology as an independent tool to validate correlations between records. While the INTIMATE protocols (Lowe et al., 2008; Blockley et al., 2011) are equally applicable to marine and terrestrial records, spatially and temporally variable marine radiocarbon reservoir age effects (MREs) provide a challenge to using marine radiocarbon in the former as an independent chronostratigraphic tool. Despite the inherent uncertainties associated with 'tuning', we conclude that the mid-points of the common abrupt warming transitions associated with the well-defined, millennial-scale climate oscillations (the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D/O) cycles) observed in the oxygen isotopes of the Greenland ice cores and North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) records currently provide the most robust correlation tie-points from which to derive age control. In this invited INTIMATE special issue article we propose a new protocol for establishing marine event-based chronostratigraphies in the North Atlantic region and focus on areas of chronological potential in palaeoceanographic research. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.