Early Palaeogene temperature evolution of the southwest Pacific Ocean

Peter K. Bijl (), Stefan Schouten, Appy Sluijs, Gert-Jan Reichart, James C. Zachos and Henk Brinkhuis
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Peter K. Bijl: Palaeoecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Faculty of Science, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology,
Stefan Schouten: NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research, PO Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands
Appy Sluijs: Palaeoecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Faculty of Science, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology,
Gert-Jan Reichart: Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands
James C. Zachos: University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
Henk Brinkhuis: Palaeoecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Faculty of Science, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology,

Nature, 2009, vol. 461, issue 7265, 776-779

Abstract: Early Palaeogene climate: towards the 'icehouse' Peter Bijl and colleagues show that about 50 to 55 million years ago almost no gradient in sea surface temperature (SST) existed between sub-equatorial and sub-polar regions. Prior work had suggested the absence of a latitudinal SST gradient in the Early Eocene Age; here, the SST sequence provides an unusually well dated new constraint on the continuous climate evolution up to the Eocene–Oligocene descent into the icehouse climate around 34 million years ago. As the southern ocean cooled to about 21 °C, the tropics stayed relatively constant. This suggests that global CO2 decreases alone are insufficient to explain the latitudinally divergent temperature evolution.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature08399

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