Rocio Caballero-Gill | USGS Science

USGS2024

Isotopic evidence against North Pacific Deep Water formation during late Pliocene warmth

Several modelling and observational studies suggest deep water formation in the subpolar North Pacific as a possible alternative mode of thermohaline circulation that occurred in the warm Pliocene, a time when global atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide was like the modern atmosphere (~400 ppm). We test this hypothesis by measuring the δ 13 C of the benthic foraminifer Cibicidoides wuellerstorfi collected from northernmost Pacific mid-Piacenzian Warm Period (3.264–3.025 Myr ago) sediments. The data reveal progressively more isotopically negative dissolved inorganic carbon along a northward Equator-to-pole transect, the opposite of the expected Pliocene Pacific meridional overturning circulation signal. C. wuellerstorfi δ 13 C is also often more positive at the deeper Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) site 887 compared with the shallower ODP site 883, suggesting ‘bottom-up’ ventilation of the deep Pacific Ocean. We then present alkenone sea surface temperature and export-productivity data from ODP site 883, which suggest that late Pliocene subarctic North Pacific carbonate sedimentation was, at least in part, probably due to higher coccolithophore export production, rather than North Pacific Deep Water formation as previously argued. Therefore, we suggest it is unlikely that North Pacific Deep Water formation occurred in the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period, although a shallower overturning cell cannot be ruled out.

Nature Geoscience↗

USGS2019

100-kyr paced climate change in the Pliocene warm period, Southwest Pacific

The mid to late Pliocene (~4.2-2.8 Ma.) represents an experiment in climate sensitivity to orbital pacing in which nearly all continental ice was confined to the Southern Hemisphere. Most studies have emphasized the dominant role of obliquity in determining changes in ice volume and temperature at this time, although most records come from the Northern Hemisphere, instead of the hemisphere where the bulk of ice volume resided. We present the first orbitally-resolved, mid to late Pliocene Southern Hemisphere paired records of surface and subsurface variability from two deep ocean archives from the Southwest Pacific Ocean. These records indicate dominance of low frequencies centered at ~100 kyr for this time period. Because these signatures extend coherently and synchronously from mid-depth water properties (δ13C, δ18O of benthic foraminifera), which have their chemistry set in the subantarctic belt, to the surface (alkenone-derived SST estimates), we infer the fingerprint of the ~ 100 kyr cycles must have extended over a large region of the Southern Hemisphere. We propose that nonlinearities in climate response to precessional forcing- most likely through ice sheet and/or carbon cycle behavior- generated the observed low frequency behavior. A review of previously published mid to late Pliocene time series suggests that the ~100 kyr pacing may be a global phenomenon and that major circa-100 kyr excursions in Pliocene climate were an important overlay to the underlying 41 kyr glacial-interglacial rhythm. These results caution against using existing Pliocene isotopic templates as a ways to assessing stratigraphy or developing a time scale.

Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology↗