Tropical Atlantic temperature seasonality at the end of the last interglacial

Thomas Felis (), Cyril Giry, Denis Scholz, Gerrit Lohmann, Madlene Pfeiffer, Jürgen Pätzold, Martin Kölling and Sander R. Scheffers
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Thomas Felis: MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Cyril Giry: MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Denis Scholz: Institute for Geosciences, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Gerrit Lohmann: MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Madlene Pfeiffer: Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)
Jürgen Pätzold: MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Martin Kölling: MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
Sander R. Scheffers: Marine Ecology Research Centre, Southern Cross University

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The end of the last interglacial period, ~118 kyr ago, was characterized by substantial ocean circulation and climate perturbations resulting from instabilities of polar ice sheets. These perturbations are crucial for a better understanding of future climate change. The seasonal temperature changes of the tropical ocean, however, which play an important role in seasonal climate extremes such as hurricanes, floods and droughts at the present day, are not well known for this period that led into the last glacial. Here we present a monthly resolved snapshot of reconstructed sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean for 117.7±0.8 kyr ago, using coral Sr/Ca and δ18O records. We find that temperature seasonality was similar to today, which is consistent with the orbital insolation forcing. Our coral and climate model results suggest that temperature seasonality of the tropical surface ocean is controlled mainly by orbital insolation changes during interglacials.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7159

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