More efficient North Atlantic carbon pump during the Last Glacial Maximum

J. Yu (), L. Menviel, Z. D. Jin, D. J. R. Thornalley, G. L. Foster, E. J. Rohling, I. N. McCave, J. F. McManus, Y. Dai, H. Ren, F. He, F. Zhang, P. J. Chen and A. P. Roberts
Additional contact information
J. Yu: The Australian National University
L. Menviel: University of New South Wales
Z. D. Jin: Chinese Academy of Sciences
D. J. R. Thornalley: University College London
G. L. Foster: National Oceanography Centre
E. J. Rohling: The Australian National University
I. N. McCave: University of Cambridge
J. F. McManus: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Y. Dai: The Australian National University
H. Ren: National Taiwan University
F. He: University of Wisconsin-Madison
F. Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
P. J. Chen: Tongji University
A. P. Roberts: The Australian National University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~20,000 years ago), the global ocean sequestered a large amount of carbon lost from the atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere. Suppressed CO2 outgassing from the Southern Ocean is the prevailing explanation for this carbon sequestration. By contrast, the North Atlantic Ocean—a major conduit for atmospheric CO2 transport to the ocean interior via the overturning circulation—has received much less attention. Here we demonstrate that North Atlantic carbon pump efficiency during the LGM was almost doubled relative to the Holocene. This is based on a novel proxy approach to estimate air–sea CO2 exchange signals using combined carbonate ion and nutrient reconstructions for multiple sediment cores from the North Atlantic. Our data indicate that in tandem with Southern Ocean processes, enhanced North Atlantic CO2 absorption contributed to lowering ice-age atmospheric CO2.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10028-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10028-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10028-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().