Abstract
The north Atlantic ocean is involved in the rapid climatic changes observed during glacial times. Indeed, many paleoclimatic indicators, from surface hydrological reconstructions, to deep water chemistry proxies, clearly indicate that major reorganizations of the Atlantic happened together with, and to some extent are probably responsible for the abrupt climatic shifts recorded in Greenland ice, but also in many marine and continental sites around the world.
We have performed a detailed study of the last interglacial period, or Eemian, on several marine cores along a latitudinal transect in the North Atlantic ocean in order
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to investigate the role of the Atlantic ocean during warm periods
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to understand to what extent similar mechanisms were also at work at these times.
Though the North Hemisphere ice volume was minimal and global ice volume constant throughout this time period, some trends in the sea surface temperatures and salinities are clearly recorded in the cores we have studied. These results are probably documenting the response of the ocean-atmosphere mostly to insolation changes, and represent an opportunity to better understand the inception of the last glaciation. In particular, the abrupt event recorded by Adkins et al. (1997) in the deep Atlantic, just at the end of this period of minimal ice volume, illustrates that the role of Atlantic ocean reorganizations are also probably quite important for the understanding of warm period variability, as well as the variability of cold periods.
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Cortijo, E., Balbon, E., Elliot, M., Labeyrie, L., Turon, JL. (1999). Glacial and Interglacial Hydrological Changes in the North Atlantic Ocean. In: Abrantes, F., Mix, A.C. (eds) Reconstructing Ocean History. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4197-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4197-4_6
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