Middle Pleistocene sea-surface temperature change in the southwest Pacific Ocean on orbital and suborbital time scales
- 1Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania, GPO Box 252-77, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
- 2Antarctic Cooperative Research Center, University of Tasmania, GPO Box 252-80, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
Abstract
A record of estimated sea surface temperature (SST) change between 575 and 400 ka has been obtained from planktonic foraminifera at Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 594 in the southwest Pacific Ocean. The Site 594 record indicates that SSTs during marine oxygen isotope stage 11 were similar to those of the Holocene, in contrast to suggestions of warmer than Holocene SSTs during stage 11. If these SSTs reflect global conditions, then ice-sheet collapse may not require temperatures warmer than in the Holocene. Millennial-scale oscillations in SST (∼3 °C) occurred within the stage 12 glacial interval, spaced every ∼5–10 k.y., on time scales similar to those observed within stage 12 in the North Atlantic. The consistency between these records may require global-scale mechanisms capable of producing rapid climate change, as suggested for later Quaternary intervals.
Footnotes
-
↵GSA Data Repository item 200069, Sea surface temperature, Comprehensive ocean-atmosphere data set, is available on request from Documents Secretary, GSA, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, editinggeosociety.org, or at www.geosociety.org/pubs/ft2000.htm.
-
↵*King—alexandkpostoffice.antcrc.utas.edu.au; Howard—Will.Howardutas.edu.au
-
Data Repository item 200069 contains additional material related to this article
-
- Accepted April 19, 2000.
- Received October 25, 1999.
- Revision received April 10, 2000.
- Geological Society of America
