links between marine and atmospheric processes oscillating on a millennial time scale a multi proxy study of the last 50 000 yr from the alboran sea western mediterranean sea abstract the large dataset obtained from the extensive study of images core md95 2043 recovered from the alboran sea western mediterranean shows the periodicities and phase relationships of oceanographic and atmospheric processes on a millennial time scale the 1470 yr cycle is the most significant with the exception of the records reflecting climatic or environmental changes on land which show statistically significant 3300 and 8000 frequency bands the investigation of these core records on a millennial scale resolution allows us to establish the evolution of oceanographic and atmospheric mechanisms that influenced the western mediterranean region in the course of the dansgaard oeschger cycles accordingly possible land sea interactions can be identified and situated in the context of the temporal succession of the different climatic processes for instance saharan dust supply from northern africa appears to lead high latitude climate changes suggesting that low latitude feedback processes were involved in forcing the millennial climatic variability in the westernmost mediterranean

paleoenvironmental changes at the lower pleistocene montalbano jonico section southern italy global versus regional signals abstract integrated high resolution data from calcareous plankton assemblages foraminifera and nannofossils together with geochemical and mineralogical investigations have been collected at the on land montalbano jonico section southern italy in order to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental changes through marine isotope stages mis 23 37 time series analysis on globigerina bulloides and cassidulina carinata 18o records and on selected calcareous plankton proxies mainly revealed the occurrence of precession and obliquity forcing the deposition of sapropel layers which are interbedded in the montalbano jonico section was driven by water column stratification insolation cycle i 104 and enhanced sea surface water productivity insolation cycle i 112 i 102 and i 86 different paleoenvironmental conditions mark the sedimentary evolution of the section from 1240 to 1082 ka mis 37 mis 32 high percentage abundances of warm and oligotrophic planktonic foraminifera and calcareous nannofossil taxa indicate the establishment of oligotrophic and stratified surface water conditions a key paleoenvironmental change occurred during mis 31 from about 1080 to 1065 ka which was a very warm interglacial characterized by an increase of tropical subtropical globigerinoides ruber group and globigerinoides trilobus and low salinity braarudosphaera bigelowii sea surface water taxa during this interval more humid climate conditions coupled with changes in local paleomorphology may have triggered a higher and unusual freshwater input and the creation of a new entry point for sediment supply into the basin from a different drainage area from about 1065 to 1010 ka mis 30 mis 29 a cool and dry climate prevailed in the circum mediterranean area during a time of precession maxima this favored lowered sea surface temperatures and an increase of polar water neogloboquadrina pachyderma left coiling there are also indications of a reduction of the terrigenous input from the new source area from 1010 ka upward mis 28 mis 23 the higher abundances of globigerina bulloides turborotalita quinqueloba and calciosolenia spp indicate enhanced productivity conditions probably related to high turbidity of sea surface waters triggered by a more conspicuous sediment input from land analysis of the long term trends in the multiproxy patterns suggests that the major paleoenvironmental changes occurred as a consequence of the combined effect of orbitally controlled global climate and regional processes

millennial scale northwest african droughts related to heinrich events and dansgaard oeschger cycles evidence in marine sediments from offshore senegal 1 we present a suite of new high resolution records 0 135 ka representing pulses of aeolian fluvial and biogenic sedimentation along the senegalese continental margin a multiproxy approach based on rock magnetic element and color data was applied on three cores enclosing the present day northern limit of the itcz a strong episodic aeolian contribution driven by stronger winds and dry conditions and characterized by high hematite and goethite input was revealed north of 13 n these millennial scale dust fluxes are synchronous with north atlantic heinrich stadials fluvial clay input driven by the west african monsoon predominates at 12 n and varies at dansgaard oeschger time scales while marine productivity is strongly enhanced during the african humid periods and marine isotope stage 5 from latitudinal signal variations we deduce that the last glacial itcz summer position was located between core positions at 12 26 and 13 40 n furthermore this work also shows that submillennial periods of aridity over northwest africa occurred more frequently and farther south than previously thought

automatic interpretation of gravity gradiometric data in two dimensions vertical gradient1 the magnetic and gravity field produced by a given homogeneous source are related through poisson s equation starting from this consideration it is shown that some 2d interpretation tools widely applied in the analysis of aeromagnetic data can also be used for the interpretation of gravity gradiometric data vertical gradient this paper deals specifically with the werner deconvolution analytic signal and euler s equation methods after a short outline of the mathematical development synthesized examples have been used to discuss the efficiency and limits of these interpretation methods these tools could be applied directly to airborne gravity gradiometric data as well as ground gravity surveys after transformation of the bouguer anomalies into vertical gradient anomalies an example is given of the application of the werner deconvolution and euler s equation methods to a microgravity survey

millennial scale variability in western tropical atlantic surface ocean hydrography during the early pliocene abstract we use high resolution oxygen isotope data 18o from planktonic foraminifera in the western tropical atlantic ocean ocean drilling program leg 154 site 925 to investigate millennial scale climate variability during an interval of relative climate warmth the early pliocene for this purpose we have chosen a 100 kyr long time interval from 4 13 to 4 24 ma and subsampled it to obtain an average time step of 800 yr we reconstruct changes in upper ocean hydrography using the 18o values of globigerinoides sacculifer a mixed layer dweller and neogloboquadrina dutertrei a thermocline dweller their oxygen isotopic difference 18o is taken as a measure of the mixed layer to thermocline thermal gradient time series analysis indicates that significant concentration of variance exists in the g sacculifer and n dutertrei at sub milankovitch periods of between 8 and 4 kyr and in the 18o record between 13 and 8 kyr wavelet analysis illustrates that the suborbital variance is only present in the record when the amplitude of the precessional signal is large between 4 24 and 4 20 ma in this particular portion of the record however we observe positive 18o excursions in the individual 18o time series thus the suborbital periods evident in the spectra may reflect harmonics associated with asymmetrical time series because the excursions only occur when precession forcing is also strong we suggest that there is a relationship between the proxy records and climate although we cannot conclude that it is cyclical in nature the 18o record on the other hand is characterized by positive as well as negative excursions we observe significant concentration of variance close to half precession during the portion of the record when precession forcing is also strong which we believe reflects a close although nonlinear response of the western tropical surface ocean to low latitude insolation forcing

sea surface water variability during the mid brunhes inferred from calcareous plankton in the western mediterranean odp site 975 abstract planktonic foraminifera and calcareous nannoplankton were analyzed in core ocean drilling program site 975 located in the western mediterranean in order to study their response to environmental changes across the mid brunhes interval and specifically through marine isotope stage mis 15 and 8 ca 650 230 ka multivariate analysis of assemblage composition revealed that the calcareous plankton dynamics were mainly driven by surface water temperatures both on glacial interglacial and stadial interstadial time scales throughout the studied interval foraminiferal and nannoplankton assemblages responded to environmental forcing in concert except during mis 15 when multiple environmental factors appear to have been superimposed on the otherwise dominating effect of temperature variability sea surface temperature sst has been estimated from planktonic foraminiferal assemblages using the artificial neural networks method pointing out relevant seasonal variations through the record our reconstructions reveal that calcareous plankton assemblages also responded to other environmental factors than temperature including modification in surface water stratification nutrient availability and detrital input specifically a more stable stratified water column seems to have accompanied the interval through mis 15 13 on the other hand across the mid brunhes interval from mis 12 onwards the enhanced glacial strength affected both planktonic foraminifera and calcareous nannofossils planktonic foraminifera indicate that mixed and productive surface waters developed during glacials and stadials accompanied by episodes of increased detrital input as suggested by calcareous nannoplankton assemblages enhanced food availability was likely driven by wind induced upwelling and or by continental coastal input during dry conditions persisting in the mediterranean region and over north africa finally spectral and wavelet analyses of calcareous plankton time series allowed to identify the pattern of periodic response of the plankton at milankovitch cycles and in some cases at millennial variability the dominant 100 kyr periodicity recorded in surface water temperature proxies clearly reflects a major response of the planktonic community to the global glacial interglacial climate pattern high frequency variation 5 8 11 13 ky of surface water temperature proxies and of selected taxa abundance highlights the occurrence of millennial scale instability superimposed on the paleoenvironmental modifications occurring through the mid brunhes interval climate transition this framework accounts for the occurrence of different surface water dynamics across the mid brunhes interval and is in favor of the hypothesis that the millennial scale surface water temperature variations are modulated by the harmonics of the precession forcing

suborbital scale surface and deep water records in the subtropical north atlantic implications on thermohaline overturn abstract we reconstruct millennial scale variations in sea surface hydrography and deep water flow in the northwestern subtropical atlantic ocean drilling program leg 172 sites 1056 and 1063 with a focus on marine isotope stage mis 9 together with published records from this region the new data also afford a longer term perspective on millennial scale changes in meridional overturning circulation spanning two full interglacial intervals mis 9 and 11 as well as two full glacial intervals mis 10 and 12 planktic foraminiferal 18o values indicate relatively stable conditions during the peak warmth of mis 9 but three large cold excursions disrupt the otherwise smooth transition toward glacial mis 8 there is no unique response in the site 1063 benthic foraminiferal 13c values that would suggest a concomitant decrease in the relative flux of nadw during these events similarly there is no persistent correlation between millennial scale variations in surface and deep water hydrography over the entire mis 8 13 interval while millennial scale variations at the sea surface are most pronounced during glacial intervals and the transitions toward glacial intervals millennial scale variations in the deep water hydrography tend to be largest during the warm periods this observation supports that rapid changes in thermohaline circulation are sensitive to driving forces other than those directly related to ice sheet size time series analysis shows that spectral power in the benthic foraminiferal 13c record contains periodicities related to the second 10 kyr and fourth harmonics 5 kyr of precession in this record 20 kyr pointing to the importance of tropical processes

coupling of the hemispheres in observations and simulations of glacial climate change abstract we combine reconstructions climate model simulations and a conceptual model of glacial climate change on millennial time scales to examine the relation between the high latitudes of both hemispheres a lead lag analysis of synchronised proxy records indicates that temperature changes in greenland preceded changes of the opposite sign in antarctica by 400 500 yr a composite record of the dansgaard oeschger events shows that rapid warming cooling in greenland was followed by a slow cooling warming phase in antarctica the amplitudes rates of change and time lag of the interhemispheric temperature changes found in the reconstructions are in excellent agreement with climate model simulations in which the formation of north atlantic deep water is perturbed the simulated time lag between high northern and southern latitudes is mainly determined by the slow meridional propagation of the signal in the southern ocean our climate model simulations also show that increased deep water formation in the north atlantic leads to a reduction of the antarctic circumpolar current through diminishing meridional density gradients in the southern ocean we construct a simple conceptual model of interhemispheric dansgaard oeschger oscillations this model explains major features of the recorded temperature changes in antarctica as well as the general shape of the north south phase relation found in the observations including a broad peak of positive correlations for a lead of antarctica over greenland by 1000 2000 yr the existence of this peak is due to the regularity of the oscillations and does not imply a southern hemisphere trigger mechanism contrary to previous suggestions our findings thus further emphasise the role of the thermohaline circulation in millennial scale climate variability

surface and deep ocean circulation in the subpolar north atlantic during the mid pleistocene revolution 1 we investigated surface and deep ocean variability in the subpolar north atlantic from 1000 to 500 thousand years ago ka based on two ocean drilling program odp sites feni drift site 980 55 29 n 14 42 w and bjorn drift site 984 61 25 n 24 04 w benthic foraminiferal stable isotope data planktic foraminiferal faunas ice rafted debris data and faunally based sea surface temperature estimates help test the hypothesis that oceanographic changes in the north atlantic region were associated with the onset of the 100 kyr world during the mid pleistocene revolution based on percentage of neogloboquadrina pachyderma s records from both sites surface waters during interglacials and glacials were cooler in the mid pleistocene than during marine isotope stages mis 5 and 6 in particular interglaciations at bjorn drift site 984 were significantly cooler faunal evidence suggests that the interglacial arctic front shifted from a position between the two sites to a position northwest of bjorn drift site 984 after ca 610 ka as during the late pleistocene we find faunal evidence for lagging surface warmth at most of the glacial initiations during the mid pleistocene each initiation is associated with high benthic 13c values that are maintained into the succeeding glaciation which we term lagging nadw production these findings indicate that lagging warmth and lagging nadw production are robust features of the regional climate system that persist in the middle to late pleistocene

four climate cycles of recurring deep and surface water destabilizations on the iberian margin centennial climate variability over the last ice age exhibits clear bipolar behavior high resolution analyses of marine sediment cores from the iberian margin trace a number of associated changes simultaneously proxies of sea surface temperature and water mass distribution as well as relative biomarker content demonstrate that this typical north south coupling was pervasive for the cold phases of climate during the past 420 000 years cold episodes after relatively warm and largely ice free periods occurred when the predominance of deep water formation changed from northern to southern sources these results reinforce the connection between rapid climate changes at mediterranean latitudes and century to millennial variability in northern and southern polar regions

forcing of atlantic equatorial and subpolar millennial cycles by precession abundance cycles of the marine alga florisphaera profunda centered on a period of 7600 carbon 14 years 8400 calendar years are present in high resolution records from the equatorial atlantic spanning 0 to 45 000 years ago these cycles correlate with heinrich events 1 through 5 which document rapid changes in continental ice melting around the subpolar north atlantic these variations in f profunda are a direct response to modulation in zonal wind driven divergence produced by a precessional component of orbital variation during a time of reduced eccentricity modulation

interglacial hydroclimate in the tropical west pacific through the late pleistocene records of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration pco 2 and antarctic temperature have revealed an intriguing change in the magnitude of interglacial warmth and pco 2 at around 430 000 years ago 430 ka but the global climate repercussions of this change remain elusive here we present a stalagmite based reconstruction of tropical west pacific hydroclimate from 570 to 210 ka the results suggest similar regional precipitation amounts across the four interglacials contained in the record implying that tropical hydroclimate was insensitive to interglacial differences in pco 2 and high latitude temperature in contrast during glacial terminations drying in the tropical west pacific accompanied cooling events in northern high latitudes therefore the tropical convective heat engine can either stabilize or amplify global climate change depending on the nature of the climate forcing

sea surface temperatures did not control the first occurrence of hudson strait heinrich events during mis 16 1 hudson strait hs heinrich events ice rafting events in the north atlantic originating from the laurentide ice sheet lis are among the most dramatic examples of millennial scale climate variability and have a large influence on global climate however it is debated as to whether the occurrence of hs heinrich events in the eastern north atlantic in the geological record depends on greater ice discharge or simply from the longer survival of icebergs in cold waters using sediments from integrated ocean drilling program iodp site u1313 in the north atlantic spanning the period between 960 and 320 ka we show that sea surface temperatures ssts did not control the first occurrence of hs heinrich like events in the sedimentary record using mineralogy and organic geochemistry to determine the characteristics of ice rafting debris ird we detect the first hs heinrich like event in our record around 643 ka marine isotope stage mis 16 which is similar as previously reported for site u1308 however the accompanying high resolution alkenone based sst record demonstrates that the first hs heinrich like event did not coincide with low ssts thus the hs heinrich like events do indicate enhanced ice discharge from the lis at the end of the mid pleistocene transition not simply the survivability of icebergs due to cold conditions in the north atlantic

a 20 m middle pleistocene sea level highstand bermuda and the bahamas due to partial collapse of antarctic ice marine deposits at 20 3 m on the tectonically stable coastlines of bermuda and the bahamas support the hypothesis of a partial collapse of the antarctic ice sheet during the middle pleistocene beach sediments fill a sea cave at 22 m in bermuda and horizontal fenestrae filled beds crop out on platforms at two sites as high as 21 m in eleuthera bahamas carbonate beach sands are bound by an early generation of isopachous fibrous cement that is characteristic of a phreatic marine environment amino acid racemization and tims thermal ionization mass spectrometry dates constrain the age of the deposits to between 390 and 550 ka while proxy evidence supports a correlation with oxygen isotope stage 11 this direct geologic evidence of a 20 decrease in polar ice during the middle pleistocene has important implications for the stability of ice sheets during warm interglaciations

foraminiferal faunal estimates of paleotemperature circumventing the no analog problem yields cool ice age tropics the sensitivity of the tropics to climate change particularly the amplitude of glacial to interglacial changes in sea surface temperature sst is one of the great controversies in paleoclimatology here we reassess faunal estimates of ice age ssts focusing on the problem of no analog planktonic foraminiferal assemblages in the equatorial oceans that confounds both classical transfer function and modern analog methods a new calibration strategy developed here which uses past variability of species to define robust faunal assemblages solves the no analog problem and reveals ice age cooling of 5 o to 6oc in the equatorial current systems of the atlantic and eastern pacific oceans classical transfer functions underestimated temperature changes in some areas of the tropical oceans because core top assemblages misrepresented the ice age faunal assemblages our finding is consistent with some geochemical estimates and model predictions of greater ice age cooling in the tropics than was inferred by climate long range investigation mapping and prediction climap 1981 and thus may help to resolve a long standing controversy our new foraminiferal transfer function suggests that such cooling was limited to the equatorial current systems however and supports climap s inference of stability of the subtropical gyre centers

abrupt cold spells in the northwest mediterranean hitherto unknown abundance peaks of left coiling l c neogloboquadrina pachyderma from a gulf of lions piston core indicate that abrupt cold spells associated with atlantic heinrich events affected the mediterranean n pachyderma l c is typical of sub polar waters in the open ocean the southern edge of its glacial north atlantic bioprovince reached south portugal only trace abundances of n pachyderma l c are known from quaternary mediterranean sediments suggesting that no significant invasions occured via the strait of gibraltar the gulf of lions abundance peaks therefore seem to reflect area specific thriving of a normally rare but indigenous taxon in the western mediterranean through local favorable habitat development the general planktonic foraminiferal record suggests that the basic hydrographic regime in the gulf of lions with wintertime deep convective overturn was relatively stable over the past 60 kyr under these conditions high abundances of n pachyderma l c would essentially imply temperature reductions of the order of 5 8 relative to the present

mediterranean climate and oceanography and the periodic development of anoxic events sapropels mediterranean sapropels are layers with elevated organic carbon concentrations that contrast with surrounding sediments which are organic poor sapropels occur quasi periodically in sedimentary sequences of the last 13 5 million years and exist both in the eastern and western mediterranean sub basins they have been the subject of extensive study based on records from both short conventional and long ocean drilling program sediment cores and from a wide variety of uplifted marine sediment sequences on the basin margins and islands previous syntheses in the 1990s and 2000s have discussed how the formation of sapropels is commonly ascribed to deep sea anoxia enhanced export productivity or a combination of these effects however a wealth of new evidence and insights has emerged during the past 1 2 decades based on traditional and novel proxy data as well as modelling which has revealed intriguing new aspects and nuances to the reconstructed conditions hence it is timely to present a new synthesis of current understanding of the processes behind the formation of sapropels which have over the past decade also become a matter of commercial interest in sub salt hydrocarbon exploration in this review we present a context of modern mediterranean climate and oceanography followed by an integrated assessment of the growing understanding of climatological and ocean circulation changes that were associated with sapropel deposition we find that sapropels predominantly formed during astronomically timed episodes when climatic and oceanographic conditions and ecological responses broadly preconditioned the basin for sapropel deposition there is strong correspondence with times of monsoon intensification fuelling runoff from north africa into the mediterranean sea while preconditioning due to sea level rise and regional precipitation and runoff may have contributed as well within these broad episodes of surface buoyancy gain and resultant decline in deep water ventilation specific deposition under dysoxic anoxic or even euxinic conditions occurred within a clearly dynamic system that was characterised by complex spatial and depth dependent patterns gradients with distinct temporal variability on at least decadal to centennial millennial timescales in the final section we evaluate the implications of different modes of deep water removal from silled basins to investigate why sapropels are more frequently and often more intensely developed in the eastern mediterranean than in the western mediterranean

a review of calcareous nannofossil astrobiochronology encompassing the past 25 million years this paper presents a review of astrobiochronological calibration of recent to late oligocene calcareous nannofossil datum events biohorizons included in the paper are those of the widely used standard nannofossil zonations of martini e 1971 standard tertiary and quaternary calcareous nannoplankton zonation in farinacci a ed proceedings of the second international conference on planktonic microfossils roma rome ed tecnosci vol 2 pp 739 785 and okada h and bukry d 1980 supplementary modification and introduction of code numbers to the low latitude coccolith biostratigraphy zonation bukry 1973 1975 marine micropaleontology 51 321 325 as well as supplementary biohorizons proposed in the literature the biohorizons have been selected on the basis of the unambiguous taxonomy of the index taxa and their biostratigraphic usefulness we emphasise the application of rigorous methodology in nannofossil studies which permits an evaluation of biohorizons in terms of reliability and calibrates their potential correlatability astrochronological age estimates rely on the geologic timescale developed by the ics in 2004 with some new calibrations included we provide an overview of the relative position of biohorizons versus the astronomically calibrated ages of magnetic reversals and reference isotope stratigraphies surprisingly there are still few high resolution quantitative biostratigraphic studies of astrochronologically tuned sections in spite of the central role of such studies in addressing fundamental problems such as the tempo and mode of plankton evolution

origin of millennial scale climate signals in the subtropical north atlantic we present a high resolution planktonic foraminiferal stable isotope record globigerinoides ruber spanning marine oxygen isotope stages miss 6 through 8 in the northwestern subtropical atlantic ocean ocean drilling program leg 172 site 1059 the record fills a gap to produce an about 1 3 myr long continuous time series of high frequency 1 12 kyr surface ocean hydrography the first of this kind we test the hypothesis that the suborbital climate signals i e half and quarter precession cycles are linked to precession forcing in tropical latitudes semiprecession cycles present between 0 and 320 ka are of the right periodicity to relate to the dominant precession forcing 23 kyr these cycles are evident as double peaks within the given precession framework and there is good match in the amplitude modulation of the filter output and the 18o time series quarter precession cycles dominate the suborbital spectra between 320 ka and 1 3 ma periodicities are close to those expected from the harmonics of the dominant precession peaks in the 18o record but present in the time series only intermittently and their amplitude modulation does not match that of the primary precession period thus only the half precession cycles evidence a response to low latitude insolation such as that introduced by insolation maxima at the equinoxes or solstices during the course of a precession cycle additionally we find well defined rapid 1 5 2 kyr variations across the first of the interglacial maxima of mis 7 adding to evidence of non ice sheet related forcing factors in driving climate instabilities

revised tuning of ocean drilling program site 964 and kc01b mediterranean and implications for the δ18o tephra calcareous nannofossil and geomagnetic reversal chronologies of the past 1 1 myr 1 high resolution color reflectance records of kc01 and kc01b calabrian ridge ionian sea are presented and compared with a modified spliced high resolution color reflectance record of ocean drilling program odp site 964 this comparison revealed that kc01b is characterized by intensive deformation between 27 and 28 5 m piston depth and that some sapropels are tectonically reduced in thickness moreover the piston coring has caused considerable stretching in the top of kc01 and kc01b using a new splice of odp site 964 as guide previous astronomical tuned timescales of kc01b and odp site 964 were evaluated this evaluation resulted in a new sapropel based astronomical timescale for the last 1 1 myr the new timescale implies a much more uniform change in sedimentation rate for the ionian sea cores two prominent excursions to lighter values in the 18o record of the planktonic foraminiferal species globigerinoides ruber occur during marine isotopic stages 12 and 16 applying the new timescale these shifts correspond with maxima in obliquity and are punctuated by minima in the precession cycle they are absent in global ice volume records and are interpreted as reflecting a summer low salinity surface water lens that floats on top of extremely saline intermediate and deep waters at times of the very low sea levels during these glacial periods all biostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic events found in kc01b and odp site 964 were re dated according to the new timescale and the ages of 33 tephra layers were reviewed the new ages for the calabrian ridge 2 and 3 magnetic events in the brunhes are concordant with minima in the global sint800 composite record derived from worldwide deep sea records of relative paleointensity and have been attributed to the big lost and la palma excursions respectively

millennial scale ice rafting events and hudson strait heinrich like events during the late pliocene and pleistocene a review abstract various types of abrupt millennial scale climate variability such as dansgaard oeschger and heinrich events characterized the last glacial period over the last decade a number of studies demonstrated that such millennial scale climate variability was not limited to the last glacial but inherent to quaternary climate here we review the occurrence and origin of millennial ice rafting events in the north atlantic during the late pliocene and pleistocene last 3 4 ma with a special focus on north atlantic hudson strait hs heinrich like events we show that heinrich layers 5 4 2 and 1 in marine sediment cores from across the north atlantic all bear the organic geochemical fingerprint of the hudson area using this framework and combining previously published results detailed investigations into the organic and inorganic chemistry of ice rafted debris ird found across the north atlantic demonstrate that prior to mis 16 650 ka ird in the north atlantic did not originate from the hudson area of northern canada the signature of this early ird is distinctly different compared to that of hs heinrich layers rather ice rafting events during the late pliocene and early pleistocene predominantly emanated from the calving of the greenland and fennoscandian ice sheets and possibly minor contributions from local ice streams from the north american and british ice sheets compared to north atlantic hs heinrich events these early pleistocene ird events had a limited impact on surface water characteristics in the north atlantic north atlantic hs heinrich like events first occurred during mis 16 at the same time the dominant frequency in silicate rich ird accumulation shifted from the obliquity 41 ka to a 100 ka frequency across the north atlantic iceberg survivability or a change in iceberg trajectory likely did not control this change in ird regime these results lend further support for the existing hypothesis that an increase in size thickness of the laurentide ice sheet controls the occurrence of north atlantic hs heinrich events favoring an internal dynamic mechanism for their occurrence

a new inversion method of coda waveforms to determine spatial distribution of coda scatterers in the crust and uppermost mantle we have developed a new inversion method of coda waveforms from local earthquakes to estimate the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of scattering coefficient in the crust and the uppermost mantle a preliminary analysis by this method was applied to the data observed at the hokuriku district central japan inhomogeneous structures have been revealed in both horizontal and vertical directions as follows 1 strong scatterers are distributed in some localized parts of the surface layer and the upper crust 2 some of the strong scatterers seem to be related to major active faults 3 horizontal variation of scattering coefficient is smaller in the uppermost mantle than in the crust we have found that the method presented here is effective enough to investigate deterministically the inhomogeneity in the shallow part of the crust

ocean surface water response to short term climate changes revealed by coccolithophores from the gulf of cadiz ne atlantic and alboran sea w mediterranean the response of coccolithophore assemblages to short term millennial and centennial climatic changes over the last 50 kyr is studied in core m39029 7 from the gulf of cadiz atlantic ocean and core md95 2043 from the alboran sea western mediterranean sea the nannoplankton data are compared with oxygen isotopes u37k sst and other biogeochemical and sedimentological proxies to obtain a new perspective of the paleoceanography and paleoecology of the area during these short term climatic changes coccolithophores indicate that heinrich events he were characterised by the presence of cold low salinity and turbid water masses on both sides of the strait of gibraltar high abundances of the lower photic zone lpz species florisphaera profunda in the gulf of cadiz synchronous with he are interpreted as being an evidence of upper water column stratification on the atlantic side these episodes coincided with input of terrigenous material especially during h2 surface waters during dansgaard oeschger do stadials were also cold and turbid while most of do interstadials were characterised by warm water flora the increase in small placoliths small gephyrocapsa and emiliania huxleyi 4 m which is considered here as a cold water indicator the sharp decrease in large specimens of e huxleyi related to the warming trend in the last deglaciation can be used as a biostratigraphic reference level that marks at least approximately the deglaciation and the beginning of the holocene peaks of f profunda are observed during termination 1 t1 in the alboran sea they are isochronous with the organic rich layer 1 recognised in the western mediterranean in this interval the water column of the region was stratified as a consequence of the global increase in the sea level following the deglaciation quantitative analyses of the coccolithophore assemblage allow us to interpret that coccolithophore production has been higher in the alboran sea than in the gulf of cadiz during the holocene

sea level rise due to polar ice sheet mass loss during past warm periods background although thermal expansion of seawater and melting of mountain glaciers have dominated global mean sea level gmsl rise over the last century mass loss from the greenland and antarctic ice sheets is expected to exceed other contributions to gmsl rise under future warming to better constrain polarice sheetresponse to warmer temperatures we draw on evidence from in terglacial periods in the geologic record that ex perienced warmer polar temperatures and higher gmsls than present coastal records of sea level from these previous warm periods dem onstrate geographic variability because of the influence of several geophysical processes that operate across a range of magnitudes and time scales inferring gmsl and ice volume changes from these reconstructions is nontrivial and generally requires the use of geophysical models advances interdisciplinary studies of geo logic archives have ushered in a new era of deciphering magnitudes rates and sources of sea level rise advances in our understanding of polar ice sheet response to warmer climates have been made through an increase in the number and geographic distribution of sea level reconstructions better ice sheet constraints and the recognition that several geophysical processes cause spatially complex patterns in sea level in particular accounting for glacial isostatic processes helps to decipher spatial variability in coastal sea level records and has reconciled a number of site specific sea level reconstructions for warm periods that have oc curred within the past several hundred thou sand years this enables us to infer that during recent interglacial periods small increases in

evolution of millennial scale climate variability during the mid pleistocene 1 we use the oxygen isotopic composition of planktonic foraminifera globigerinoides ruber white from ocean drilling program site 1058 in the subtropical northwestern atlantic to construct a high resolution 800 year climate record spanning the mid pleistocene climate transition 410 ka to 1350 ka we investigate whether or not millennial scale instabilities in the proxy record are associated with the extent of continental glaciation g ruber 18o values display high frequency fluctuations throughout the record but the amplitude about mean glacial and interglacial 18o values increases at marine isotope stage mis 22 880 ka and is highest during mis 12 these observations support that millennial scale climate instabilities are associated with ice sheet size time series analysis illustrates that these variations have significant concentration of spectral power centered on periods of 10 12 ka and 5 ka the timing of these fluctuations agrees well or coincides with the periodicities of the second and fourth harmonics respectively of precessional forcing at the equator an insolation based origin of the millennial scale instabilities would be independent of ice volume and explains the presence of these fluctuations before the mid pleistocene climate transition as well as during interglacial intervals e g mis 37 and 17 because the amplitude of the millennial scale variations increases during the mid pleistocene transition feedback mechanisms associated with the growth of large 100 ka paced polar ice sheets may be important amplifiers of regional surface water hydrographic changes

a review of gravity gradiometer survey system data analyses the gravity gradiometer survey system ggss was designed to measure the local and regional gravity field from a ground or airborne moving platform with the first and only airborne field test the ggss was able to recover five arcminute by five arcminute mean gravity anomalies to an accuracy of a few mgal these results were obtained by flying the system with an operational precision of about 10 eotvos ten second average on a grid of orthogonal tracks spaced 5 km apart at an altitude of about 700 m above the terrain despite perpetual navigation problems with the global positioning system and several periods of excessive system noise the results of a performance analysis on 19 out of 128 tracks demonstrated the potential accuracy and efficiency of the ggss as an airborne gravity mapping system the ground tests both road and railway suffering from undue vehicle vibrations and from a lack of ground truth data were correspondingly less successful but they also showed no surprises in the system corrupted by these adverse conditions unfortunately the ggss program has terminated and it is appropriate to reflect on its accomplishments without going into technical details this somewhat historical review summarizes the field tests the data reduction algorithms and the test results which together portray the breadth of expertise the program engendered in the area of gravity gradiometry

arctic front shifts in the subpolar north atlantic during the mid pleistocene 800 400ka and their implications for ocean circulation abstract surface water conditions at the integrated ocean drilling program iodp site u1314 southern gardar drift 56 21 8 n 27 53 3 w 2820 m depth were inferred using planktic foraminifer assemblages between marine isotope stage mis 19 and 11 ca 800 400 ka factor analysis of the planktic foraminifer assemblages suggests that the assemblage was controlled by three factors the first factor which explained 49 of the variance is dominated by transitional and subpolar species and points to warm and salty surface water conditions atlantic water the second factor 37 is dominated by neogloboquadrina pachyderma sin and has been associated with the presence of cold and low saline surface waters arctic water finally the third factor 9 linked to a significant presence of turborotalita quinqueloba reflects the closeness of the arctic front the boundary between atlantic and arctic water the position of the arctic and polar fronts has been estimated across the glacial interglacial cycles studied according to planktic foraminifer abundances from site u1314 and their factor analysis combined with a synthesis of planktic foraminifer and diatom data from other north atlantic sites regarding at the migrations of the arctic front and the surface water masses distribution across each climatic cycle we determined five phases of development furthermore deep ocean circulation changes observed in glacial interglacial cycles have been associated with each phase the high abundance of transitional subpolar foraminifers above 65 at site u1314 during the early interglacial phase indicated that the arctic front position and surface water masses distribution were similar to present conditions during the late interglacial phase n pachyderma sin and t quinqueloba slightly increased indicating that winter sea ice slightly expanded southwestwards whereas the ice volume remained stable or was still decreasing n pachyderma sin increased rapidly above 65 at site u1314 at the first phase of glacial periods indicating the expansion of the arctic waters in the western subpolar north atlantic during the second phase of glacial periods the transitional subpolar assemblage throve again in the central subpolar north atlantic associated with strong warming events that followed ice rafting events the third phase of glacial periods corresponds to full glacial conditions in which n pachyderma sin dominated the assemblage for the whole subpolar north atlantic this division in phases may be applied to the last four climatic cycles

variability of surface water characteristics and heinrich like events in the pleistocene midlatitude north atlantic ocean biomarker and xrd records from iodp site u1313 mis 16 9 1 a reconstruction of milankovitch to millennial scale variability of sea surface temperature sst and sea surface productivity in the pleistocene midlatitude north atlantic ocean marine isotope stage mis 16 9 and its relationship to ice sheet instability was carried out on sediments from integrated ocean drilling program iodp site u1313 this reconstruction is based on alkenone and n alkane concentrations u37k index total organic carbon toc and carbonate contents x ray diffraction data magnetic susceptibility and accumulation rates increased input of ice rafted debris occurred during mis 16 12 and 10 characterized by high concentrations of dolomite quartz and feldspars and elevated accumulation rates of terrigenous matter minimum input values of terrigenous matter on the other hand were determined for mis 13 and 11 peak values of dolomite coinciding with quartz plagioclase and kalifeldspar peaks and maxima in long chain n alkanes indicative for land plants are interpreted as heinrich like events related to sudden instability of the laurentide ice sheet during early and late deglacial phases of the glacials the coincidence of increased toc values with elevated absolute concentrations of alkenones suggests increased glacial productivity probably due to a more southern position of the polar front alkenone based sst reached absolute maxima of about 19 c during mis 11 3 and absolute minima of 10 c during mis 12 and 10 within mis 11 prominent cooling events mis 11 22 and 11 24 occurred the absolute sst minima recorded directly before and after the glacial maxima mis 10 2 and 12 2 are related to heinrich like event meltwater pulses as supported by the coincidence of sst minima and maxima in c37 4 alkenones and dolomite these sudden meltwater pulses especially during terminations iv and v probably caused a collapse of phytoplankton productivity as indicated by the distinct drop in alkenone concentrations ice sheet disintegration and subsequent surges and outbursts of icebergs and meltwater discharge may have been triggered by increased insolation in the northern high latitudes

a middle pleistocene northeast atlantic coccolithophore record paleoclimatology and paleoproductivity aspects abstract changes in paleoclimate and paleoproductivity patterns have been identified by analysing in conjunction with other available proxy data the coccolithophore assemblages from core md03 2699 located in the portuguese margin in the time interval from the marine isotope stage mis 13 14 boundary to mis 9 535 to 300 ka during the mid brunhes event the assemblages associated with the eccentricity minima are characterised by higher nannoplankton accumulation rate nar values and by the blooming of the opportunistic genus gephyrocapsa changes in coccolithophore abundance are also related to glacial interglacial cycles higher nar and numbers of coccoliths g mainly occurred during the interglacial periods while these values decreased during the glacial periods superimposed on the glacial interglacial cycles climatic and paleoceanographic variability has been observed on precessional timescales the structure of the assemblages highlights the prevailing long term influence of the portugal pc and iberian poleward ipc currents following half and full precession harmonics related to the migration of the azores high ah pressure system small gephyrocapsa and coccolithus pelagicus braarudii are regarded as good indicators for periods of prevailing pc influence gephyrocapsa caribbeanica syracosphaera spp rhabdosphaera spp and umbilicosphaera sibogae denote periods of ipc influence our data also highlights the increased percentages of coccolithus pelagicus pelagicus during the occurrence of episodes of very cold and low salinity surface water probably related to abrupt climatic events and millennial scale oscillations of the ah icelandic low il system

changes in planktic and benthic foraminifer assemblages in the gulf of lions off south france response to climate and sea level change from mis 6 to mis 11 1 a multidisciplinary study involving micropaleontological and geochemical tools was carried out in borehole prgl1 promess 1 with the aim of reconstructing the impact of climate change and sea level variation between 133 ka and 406 ka in the upper slope of the gulf of lions we used factor analysis to obtain three main benthic assemblages related to eutrophic mesotrophic and oxygenated environments planktic foraminifers were grouped as warm water and cold turbulent species these results were compared with records of caco3 and major and trace elements al ca k sr as well as the c n ratio of organic matter power and cross spectral analysis showed a straightforward relationship between precession minima and thermal stratification of the water column as well as the occurrence of eutrophic bottom conditions during lowstand periods and mesotrophic environments at times of highstand these eutrophic mesotrophic oscillations usually driven by global eustatic change also involved regional variations in caco3 source to this environment during periods of precession maxima enhancement of northwesterly winds increased primary productivity by mixing enhancing the percentage of cold turbulent species in the water column and the proportion of oxygenated benthic species on the bottom during interglacial stages these events were recorded by lower biogenic carbonate at the expense of higher silicate related components most likely due to a higher supply from pyrenees rivers the record of oxygenated benthic species can be a good proxy to monitor past changes in winter intermediate water dynamics driven by northwesterly winds

globally increased pelagic carbonate production during the mid brunhes dissolution interval and the co2 paradox of mis 11 the mid brunhes dissolution interval mbdi represents a period of global carbonate dissolution lasting several hundred thousand years centred around marine isotope stage mis 11 here we report the effects of dissolution in odp core 982 taken from 1134 m in the north atlantic paradoxically records of atmospheric co2 from antarctic ice cores reveal no long term trend over the last 400 kyr and suggest that co2 during mis 11 was no higher than during the present interglacial we suggest that a global increase in pelagic carbonate production during this period possibly related to the proliferation of the gephyrocapsa coccolithophore could have altered marine carbonate chemistry in such a way as to drive increased dissolution under the constraints of steady state an increase in the production of carbonate in surface waters would cause a drawdown of global carbonate saturation and increase dissolution at the seafloor in order to reconcile the record of atmospheric co2 variability we suggest that an increase in the flux of organic matter from the surface to deep ocean associated with either a net increase in primary production or the enhanced ballasting effect provided by an increased flux of caco3 could have countered the effect of increased calcification on co2

gravity field approximation using airborne gravity gradiometer data a set of airborne gravity gradiometer survey system ggss data was used in combination with the osu89b geopotential model to predict gravity anomalies and deflections of the vertical the gradiometer data were collected during an airborne survey of the ggss in the texas oklahoma area nineteen flight tracks were in our disposal for further analysis these tracks resulted from 54 initial distinct tracks from which a processing was performed by the analytic sciences corporation in order to assess the quality of the ggss measurements a first crossover analysis was carried out the results showed large discrepancies at the crossing points between east west ew and north south ns tracks the least squares collocation method and the fast fourier transform technique were used to produce gravity anomalies and deflections of the vertical referred to geoid surface from second order derivatives measured at the flight level the predicted gravity values were then compared to truth based point free air gravity anomalies with a standard deviation s d of the differences at the level of 3 mgal in the best cases presumably improved ggss data would have given improved predictions of surface gravity values the predicted deflections of the vertical were compared to truth based values at a small number of ground stations the very low accuracy of this prediction s d 5 62 arc sec for and 6 78 for should be studied in combination with the inherent characteristics of the gravity field and the validation of ggss data in the test area

clues from mis 11 to predict the future climate a modelling point of view simulations performed with the lln two dimensional northern hemisphere climate model have confirmed that climate is largely triggered by changes in insolation forcing although atmospheric co concentration also plays an important role in particular in the amplitude of the simulated variations marine isotope stage 11 mis 11 some 400 kyr ago and the future share a common feature related to climate forcing i e the insolation at these times displays small similar variations mis 11 can be considered an analogue for future natural climate changes different simulations were performed to identify the conditions constraining the length of the mis 11 simulated interglacial clearly its length strongly depends on the phase relationship between insolation and co2 variations it is only when insolation and co act together towards a cooling i e they both decrease together that the climate enters quickly into glaciation and that the interglacial may be short otherwise each forcing alone is not able to drive the system into glaciation and the climate remains in an interglacial state the same situation applies for the future however we already know that co2 and insolation do not play together indeed insolation has been decreasing since 11 kyr bp and co2 concentration remains above 260 ppmv with a general increasing trend over the last 8000 yr therefore we conclude that the long interglacial simulated for the future is a robust feature and the earth will not enter naturally into glaciation before 50 kyr ap c 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

decadal resolution record of winter monsoon intensity over the last two millennia from planktic foraminiferal assemblages in the northeastern arabian sea the indian monsoon system is an important climate feature of the northern indian ocean small variations of the wind and precipitation patterns have fundamental influence on the societal agricultu

surface ocean temperatures in the north east atlantic during the last 500 000 years evidence from foraminiferal census data changes in north atlantic sea surface temperature sst are regarded as a key element of the climate during the quaternary however there are relatively few long term records providing quantitative sst estimates from this region using planktic foraminiferal derived ssts together with changes on species level and iceberg rafted debris the last 500 ka were studied pronounced sst changes as determined from the last glacial interglacial cycle characterize most colder periods peak interglacial temperatures were found for marine isotope stages mis 1 5e and 11 the latter two being the warmest the warm substages within mis 7 and 9 are marked by enhanced dissimilarity coefficients indicating that ssts obtained for these times appear to be overestimated this is corroborated by differences within the species assemblage which show enhanced cold water components it is therefore concluded that detailed analysis down to species level is a crucial prerequisite to better reconstructions of sst

calcareous plankton response to orbital and millennial scale climate changes across the middle pleistocene in the western mediterranean abstract the paleoenvironmental conditions through mis 15 9 at the mediterranean ocean drilling program odp site 975 were interpreted by high resolution study of calcareous plankton assemblages compared with available 18o and 13c records and high resolution paleoclimate proxies from the atlantic ocean sea surface temperatures ssts have been estimated from planktonic foraminiferal assemblages using the artificial neural networks method calcareous plankton varied dominantly on a glacial interglacial scale as testified by the sst record foraminiferal diversity total coccolith abundance and changes in warm water calcareous nannofossil taxa a general increase in foraminiferal diversity and of total coccolith abundance is observed during interglacials warmest ssts are reached during mis 11 while mis 12 and mis 10 represent the coldest intervals of the studied record during mis 12 one of the most extreme glacials of the last million years occurrence of globorotalia inflata and of neogloboquadrinids indicates a shoaling of the interface between atlantic inflowing and mediterranean outflowing waters among calcareous nannofossils the distribution of gephyrocapsa margereli gephyrocapsa muellerae 4 m also supports a reduced atlantic mediterranean exchange during mis 12 superimposed on glacial interglacial variability six short term coolings are recognized during mis 12 and 10 which appear comparable in their distribution and amplitude to the heinrich type events documented in the atlantic ocean in the same interval during these h type events neogloboquadrina pachyderma s and g margereli g muellerae 4 m increase as a response to the enhanced inflow of cold atlantic water into the mediterranean via the strait of gibraltar mediterranean surface water hydrography appears to have been most severely affected at termination v during the h type event ht4 possibly as a response to a large volume of atlantic meltwater inflow via the strait of gibraltar and or to freshwater terrigenous input deriving from local mountain glaciers three additional sst coolings are recorded through mis 14 16 but these are not well correlated with heinrich type events documented in the atlantic ocean in the same interval during these cooling episodes only the subpolar turborotalita quinqueloba increases these results highlight the sensitive response of the mediterranean basin to millennial scale climate variations related to northern hemisphere ice sheet instability and support the hypothesis that the tight connection between high latitude climate dynamics and mediterranean sea surface water features can be traced through the middle pleistocene

pleistocene fluctuations in the northern benguela current system as revealed by coccolith assemblages late pleistocene coccolith data of odp site 1082 from the eastern south atlantic off namibia were analysed to document spatial and temporal changes in surface ocean circulation upwelling intensity and associated productivity the studied site is located on the continental slope close to prominent oceanographic features such as the coastal upwelling mixing area the openoceanic realm and the warm water regime of the angola current highest numbers of total coccoliths up to 30 10 9 coccoliths g 1 sediment were observed during relatively warm periods characterised bydecreased upwellingintensity these elevatednumbers ofcoccoliths are due to highersurface water temperatures anddocumentadomainprobablyinfluencedbylowernutrientconcentrationsinanareawhereoceanicandfilamentouswatermix in contrast low numbers of coccoliths during glacial periods probably characterise time intervals of enhanced upwelling accompanied byabroad filamentous mixing area coccoliths of the genusgephyrocapsaarethe most abundant taxain samples of site 1082 their occurrences are characterised by abrupt changes in the investigated time interval in addition calcidiscus leptoporus pseudoemilinia lacunosa and reticulofenestra asanoi contribute a common part of the assemblage coccoliths accountformorethanhalfofthecarbonate withpeakcontributionofupto 80 intheinterval560to280kawhengephyrocapsa caribbeanica is the major caco3 producer increased carbonate accumulation during this time interval point to an overall weakening of the coastal upwelling intensity accompanied by a reduction of the mixing zone influencing the site location during this event d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

enhancement and sharpening the migration images of the gravity field and its gradients potential field migration represents a rapid technique for imaging the subsurface based on gravity data however migration transformation usually produces a smooth and unfocused image of the targets due to the diffusive nature of the potential fields in this paper we introduce a method of the migration image enhancement and sharpening based on the application of the hybrid focusing stabilizer which combines the edge preserving smoothing filter with the minimum support functional the method is based on the model resolution matrix of the migration operator we also improve the migration image with a novel target oriented migration method the developed method of migration image enhancement and sharpening is illustrated by synthetic model studies and case studies the case study involves imaging the full tensor gravity gradient data collected in the nordkapp basin of the barents sea

calcareous nannofossils and the origin of eastern mediterranean sapropels a quantitative analysis of calcareous nannofossil assemblages was carried out with an optical microscope on four deep sea cores raised from the eastern mediterranean and selected to form a nw se transect a total of 748 samples were studied including a very detailed analysis of sapropels s5 and s6 in two out of the four cores this paper is restricted to the discussion of the results obtained on florisphaera profunda which provided important insights on the mechanisms of sapropel formation an intricated and unravelled puzzle for the scientists of the last decades on the basis of abundance variations of f profunda the only species of calcareous nannoplankton which inhabits the lower part of the photic zone i suggest that sapropel formation was triggered by increased primary production either confined to a deep chlorophyll maximum dcm a concept previously introduced by rohling and gieskes 1989 or extended to a thicker layer of the photic zone when increased primary production was confined to the dcm sapropel s3 s4 s5 s7 and s1 this latter only in the eastern part of the basin the abundance of f profunda was enhanced greatly with respect to all other species living in the higher part of the photic zone on the contrary when the increased primary production was extended to a thicker layer of the photic zone glacial sapropels s6 and s8 the production of most nannoplankton species was favored decreasing the relative proportion of f profunda

robust 3d gravity gradient inversion by planting anomalous densities we have developed a new gravity gradient inversion method for estimating a 3d density contrast distribution defined on a grid of rectangular prisms our method consists of an iterative algorithm that does not require the solution of an equation system instead the solution grows systematically around userspecified prismatic elements called seeds with given density contrasts each seed can be assigned a different density contrast value allowing the interpretation of multiple sources with different density contrasts and that produce interfering signals in real world scenarios some sources might not be targeted for the interpretation thus we developed a robust procedure that neither requires the isolation of the signal of the targeted sources prior to the inversion nor requires substantial prior information about the nontargeted sources in our iterative algorithm the estimated sources grow by the accretion of prisms in the periphery of the current estimate in addition only the columns of the sensitivity matrix corresponding to the prisms in the periphery of the current estimate are needed for the computations therefore the individual columns of the sensitivity matrix can be calculated on demand and deleted after an accretion takes place greatly reducing the demand for computer memory and processing time tests on synthetic data show the ability of our method to correctly recover the geometry of the targeted sources even when interfering signals produced by nontargeted sources are present inverting the data from an airborne gravity gradiometry survey flown over the iron ore province of quadrilatero ferrifero southeastern brazil we estimated a compact iron ore body that is in agreement with geologic information and previous interpretations

a minimum thermodynamic model for the bipolar seesaw 1 the simplest possible model is proposed to explain a large fraction of the millennial climate variability measured in the isotopic composition of antarctic ice cores the model results from the classic bipolar seesaw by coupling it to a heat reservoir in this thermal bipolar seesaw the heat reservoir convolves northern time signals with a characteristic timescale applying the model to the data of grip and byrd we demonstrate that maximum correlation can be obtained using a timescale of about 1000 1500 years higher correlations are obtained by first filtering out the long term variability which is due to astronomical and greenhouse gas forcing and not part of the thermal bipolar seesaw the model resolves the apparent confusion whether northern and southern climate records are in or out of phase synchronous or time lagged

coccolithophores in surface sediments of the arabian sea in relation to environmental gradients in surface waters abstract one hundred surface sediment samples of the arabian sea indian ocean were investigated and relative abundances of coccoliths were compared to mean annual gradients of temperature salinity chlorophyll po4 and mixed layer depth total coccolith concentrations ranged from 42 106 g sediment in coastal areas to more than 19 000 106 g sediment in oceanic regions the general distribution does not seem to be dependent on coccolithophore productivity in surface waters alone but also on the diluting input of terrigenous material a total of 27 taxa were identified the main species dominating the assemblages were gephyrocapsa oceanica emiliania huxleyi and florisphaera profunda with a combined average abundance of more than 70 several species and species groups reflect with their distribution the environmental parameters of the overlying water masses and may be successfully used to improve palaeoclimatic reconstructions e g a f profunda exhibits a high similarity or even positive correlation to the mean annual mixed layer depth b calciosolenids can be described as coastal or shelf species while temperature and salinity gradients do not seem to be crucial for coccolithophores in this region the mean mixed layer depth as well as the po4 concentration representative for total nutrient availability may control in part the coccolithophore assemblages according to the results of a cluster analysis and the distribution pattern of all species it was possible to differentiate three main coccolithophore assemblages a g oceanica dominated assemblage mainly occurs in the northern part of the study area and can be described as high nutrient assemblage the second assemblage dominated by f profunda may be typical for oligotrophic and stable conditions in open ocean waters a third assemblage with high amounts of coastal species characterises coastal conditions on the shelves

yes some of the mediterranean outflow does come from great depth in 1973 stommel et al predicted that the western mediterranean deep water wmdw contributes directly to the mediterranean outflow through the strait of gibraltar strommel et al 1973 hydrographic data obtained in november 1985 showed unambiguous evidence of wmdw west of the major gibraltar sill thus confirming the prediction

impact of the azores front on the distribution of planktic foraminifers shelled gastropods and coccolithophorids abstract the azores front current system south of the azores islands has been studied in order to reveal the direct impact of an open oceanic thermohaline front on the distribution of the calcareous plankton planktic foraminifers pteropods heteropods and coccolithophorids were sampled from the upper 2500 m of the water column during august 1997 and january 1999 in addition the hydrography was recorded across the frontal jet on combined ctd and xbt transects in august 1997 a strong seasonal thermocline capped the azores front af at about 60 90 m water depth below the thermocline a distinct hydrographic front was indicated by temperature and salinity gradients the central af was an area of low planktic foraminiferal gastropod and coccolithophorid production and was a faunal barrier for shallow and deep dwelling species highest numbers of planktic foraminifers gastropods and coccolithophores were recorded from above the thermocline north of the af the most frequent planktic foraminiferal and pteropod species were globigerinoides ruber white and limacina inflata respectively below 100 m planktic foraminifers were most frequent north of the af and gastropod shells were rare in particular the deep dwelling planktic foraminifer globorotalia scitula was frequent only at sampling sites north of the af in january 1999 the surface water temperature of the azores front current system was lower and the thermocline was deeper than in august 1997 the planktic foraminiferal standing stock was three times higher than in august 1997 and no water depth related faunal changes occurred the fauna was dominated by globorotalia truncatulinoides and turborotalita humilis was frequent during both january and august the fauna from south of the azores was different from that to the southeast recording the occurrence of two different water masses in this study we present a micropaleontological definition of the af in order to provide a paleoceanographic tool that may be used to decipher the late quaternary current system of the north atlantic ocean

resolution and variance operators of gravity and gravity gradiometry gravity gradiometry represents a new potential field data set which may better constrain the density structure of the earth using singular value spectral decomposition of the gravity and gravity gradient kernels the model parameter resolution and model parameter variance of the two data types are compared using data from the defense mapping agency and a recently acquired collection of airborne gradient measurements from bell aerospace textron s gravity gradient survey system ggss the ggss was flown over a portion of southwestern oklahoma where the gravitational anomaly from the buried wichita basement rocks is over 60 mgal the corresponding maximum vertical gravity gradient was found to be 46 2 eotvos the determination of the subsurface density structure is cast as a linear inverse problem and for comparison a nonlinear inverse problem for both the linear and nonlinear inversions the gravity gradients improve the resolution and result in smaller variances than the vertical component of gravi

rapid identification of dolomite using a fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer ftir a fast method for identifying heinrich events in iodp site u1308 this study demonstrates that fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry ftir provides a quick and relatively inexpensive method for identifying and quantifying dolomite in deep marine sediments ftir is used to determine concentrations of dolomite in the top 29 m of sediments recovered at iodp site u1308 some of these dolomite peaks can be reliably correlated with heinrich events h1 through h6 thus ftir appears to provide a fast and reliable method for identifying heinrich events in deep sea sediments

a sustained 21 m sea level highstand during mis 11 400 ka direct fossil and sedimentary evidence from bermuda abstract a small protected karstic feature exposed in a limestone quarry in bermuda preserved abundant sedimentary and biogenic materials documenting a transgressive phase still stand and regressive phase of a sea level in excess of 21 3 m above present during marine isotope stage mis 11 400 ka as determined by u th dating and amino acid racemization cobbles and marine sediments deposited during the high energy transgressive phase exhibit rim cements indicating a subsequent phreatic environment this was succeeded stratigraphically by a still stand deposition of fine calcareous lagoonal sediments containing bioclasts of red algae and benthic and planktonic foraminifera that was intensely burrowed by marine invertebrates probably upogebiid shrimp that could not be produced under any condition other than sustained marine submergence overlying this were pure carbonate beach sands of a low energy regressive phase containing abundant remains of terrestrial and marine vertebrates and invertebrates the considerable diversity of this fauna along with taphonomic evidence from seabird remains indicates deposition by high run up waves over a minimum duration of months if not years the maximum duration has yet to be determined but probably did not exceed one or two thousand years the most abundant snails in this fauna are two species indicative of brackish water and high tide line showing that a ghyben herzberg lens must have existed at 20 m the nature of these sediments and fossil accumulation is incompatible with tsunami deposition and given the absence of evidence for tectonic uplift of the bermuda pedestal or platform provide proof that sea level during mis 11 exceeded 20 m a fact that has widespread ramifications for geologists biogeographers and human demographics along the world s coastlines

a high resolution record of late quaternary upwelling along the oman margin arabian sea based on planktonic foraminifera planktonic foraminiferal abundances fluxes test sizes and coiling properties are influenced in various ways by the southwest monsoon winds and associated upwelling in the western arabian sea to determine the short term changes in the southwest monsoon we have carried out a high resolution time series analysis of three upwelling indices total flux of planktonic foraminiferal tests and flux and relative abundance of the planktonic foraminiferal species globigerina bulloides from ocean drilling program odp site 723a oman margin western arabian sea spanning the last 19 kyr in addition we have determined the relationships between upwelling intensity and the relative abundance fluxes and shell concentrations of various planktonic foraminiferal species upwelling indices suggest that from 19 to 16 ka 22 to 18 2 cal kyr b p the sw monsoon was relatively strong compared to the period 15 8 to 12 5 ka 17 8 to 13 8 cal kyr b p the intensification of the sw monsoon took place at 12 ka 13 1 cal kyr b p and reached a peak between 10 and 5 ka 10 6 and 4 8 cal kyr b p the high resolution data further demonstrate that the sw monsoon has started weakening from 5 ka 4 8 cal kyr b p and the weakest phase was in place at 3 5 ka 3 cal kyr b p which coincides with evidence of an arid climate in western tibet fluxes and shell concentrations of many of the planktonic foraminiferal species increased between 12 and 5 ka in response to the intensification of the sw monsoon winds after the last glacial period globigerina bulloides shows a fivefold to tenfold increase in flux during this period of intense upwelling the other species whose fluxes are influenced by this upwelling change are in order from strongest to weakest response globigerinita glutinata globigerinoides ruber neogloboquadrina dutertrei globigerinella aequilateralis globigerina falconensis and globigerinoides sacculifer the relative abundances of g bulloides and g ruber increased during intense upwelling whereas the relative abundances of g glutinata n dutertrei g falconensis and g sacculifer did not increase during this period which might be due to differences in the productivity of various species in relation to upwelling change therefore the fluxes and shell concentrations provide better and more reliable information about the changes in the monsoon system in the arabian sea than relative abundance data

palaeoceanography of the last deglaciation in the alboran sea western mediterranean stable isotopes and planktonic foraminiferal records abstract oxygen isotope changes of the foraminiferal species globigerina bulloides and uvigerina peregrina eleven radiocarbon dates on the sediment fraction above 50 m and 13 biostratigraphical events allow us to correlate and to date the sediment record of the last climatic cycle in four cores from the alboran sea nine ecozones are recognized which differ from those previously established for atlantic sediments cored immediately west of gibraltar these ecozones can be grouped into two broad phases from the last glacial maximum up to near 9 500 yr b p cold north atlantic microfaunas are the major component of the assemblages during this interval dominant species replace each other according to the varying temperature and density stratification of the water masses from 9 500 yr b p up to the present time subtropical forms from the central atlantic dominate the northern atlantic forms an abrupt increase in the percentages of g inflata occurred near 7 000 b p this event was diachronous within the mediterranean during the last glacial g inflata was endemic inside the mediterranean and its abrupt increase near the end of the deglaciation did not result from replenishment from the atlantic between 4 000 and 5 000 yr b p percentages of g bulloides also increased abruptly warming conditions associated with the onset of a seasonal thermal stratification and a contrasting winter vertical convection are strongly suggested

distribution of coccoliths in surface sediments of the south eastern south atlantic ocean ecology preservation and carbonate contribution abstract recent coccoliths from 52 surface sediment samples recovered from the south eastern south atlantic were examined qualitatively and quantitatively in order to assess the controlling mechanisms for their distribution patterns such as ecological and preservational factors and their role as carbonate producers total coccolith abundances range from 0 2 to 39 9 coccoliths 109 g 1 sediment four assemblages can be delineated by their coccolith content characterising the northern benguela the middle to southern benguela the walvis ridge and the deeper water distinctions are based on multivariate ordination techniques applied on the relative abundances of the most abundant taxa emiliania huxleyi calcidiscus leptoporus gephyrocapsa spp coccolithus pelagicus and subtropical to tropical species the coccolith distribution seems to be temperature and nutrient controlled co varying with the seaward extension of the upwelling filament zone in the benguela a preservation index cex based on the differential dissolution behaviour of the delicate e huxleyi and gephyrocapsa ericsonii versus the robust c leptoporus is applied in order to detect the position of the coccolith lysocline although some samples were recognised as dissolution affected the distribution of the coccoliths in the surface sediments reflects the different oceanographic surface water conditions mass estimations of the coccolith carbonate reveal coccoliths to be only minor contributors to the carbonate preserved in the surface sediments the mean computed coccolith carbonate content is 17 wt equivalent to a mean contribution of 23 to the bulk carbonate

surface circulation variability in the balearic basin the balearic basin is defined as a wide region of the western mediterranean located in between the liguro provencal and algerian basins the dynamics of the liguro provencal basin in the north is dominated by the dense water formation process associated with a permanent circulation along the continental slope the northern current the algerian basin in the south is dominated by intense mesoscale eddies and their interactions with the unstable algerian current the balearic basin is a transition region between these two different dynamic regimes it includes the catalan sea located between the balearic islands and the iberian peninsula and the wide gulf of valencia in the south of this sea some new ideas about the surface circulation variability have been inferred from a series of noaa satellite advanced very high resolution radiometer images taken mainly from the autumn winter period during 1981 1988 and also from various in situ data the northern current which flows southward along the iberian peninsula slope is covered in summer by a warm surface layer spreading over the whole catalan sea this local warming creates one of the most intense thermal fronts in the western mediterranean the pyrenees front near the balearic islands the flow through the sills of recent atlantic water partially deflected by anticyclonic eddies from the algerian current creates the balearic front and contributes to its mesoscale variability this variability appears to be much more intense than previously described the balearic front is clearly recognized as the westward continuation of the north balearic front already defined in the open sea as the northern limit of the recent atlantic water reservoir finally the gulf of valencia is frequently influenced by water entering from the algerian basin which appears to be important in the disruption of the northern current and the formation of the balearic current the geostrophic flow associated with the balearic front

the marine isotope stage 19 in the mid latitude north atlantic ocean astronomical signature and intra interglacial variability abstract since the seminal work by hays et al 1976 a plethora of studies has demonstrated a correlation between orbital variations and climatic change however information on how changes in orbital boundary conditions affected the frequency and amplitude of millennial scale climate variability is still fragmentary the marine isotope stage mis 19 an interglacial centred at around 785 ka provides an opportunity to pursue this question and test the hypothesis that the long term processes set up the boundary conditions within which the short term processes operate similarly to the current interglacial mis 19 is characterised by a minimum of the 400 kyr eccentricity cycle subdued amplitude of precessional changes and small amplitude variations in insolation here we examine the record of climatic conditions during mis 19 using high resolution stable isotope records from benthic and planktonic foraminifera from a sedimentary sequence in the north atlantic integrated ocean drilling program expedition 306 site u1313 in order to assess the stability and duration of this interglacial and evaluate the climate system s response in the millennial band to known orbitally induced insolation changes benthic and planktonic foraminiferal 18o values indicate relatively stable conditions during the peak warmth of mis 19 but sea surface and deep water reconstructions start diverging during the transition towards the glacial mis 18 when large cold excursions disrupt the surface waters whereas low amplitude millennial scale fluctuations persist in the deep waters as recorded by the oxygen isotope signal the glacial inception occurred at 779 ka in agreement with an increased abundance of tetra unsaturated alkenones reflecting the influence of icebergs and associated meltwater pulses and high latitude waters at the study site after having combined the new results with previous data from the same site and using a variety of time series analysis techniques we evaluate the evolution of millennial climate variability in response to changing orbital boundary conditions during the early middle pleistocene suborbital variability in both surface and deep water records is mainly concentrated at a period of 11 kyr and additionally at 5 8 and 3 9 kyr in the deep ocean these periods are equal to harmonics of precession band oscillations the fact that the response at the 11 kyr period increased over the same interval during which the amplitude of the response to the precessional cycle increased supports the notion that most of the variance in the 11 kyr band in the sedimentary record is nonlinearly transferred from precession band oscillations considering that these periodicities are important features in the equatorial and intertropical insolation these observations are in line with the view that the low latitude regions play an important role in the response of the climate system to the astronomical forcing we conclude that the effect of the orbitally induced insolation is of fundamental importance in regulating the timing and amplitude of millennial scale climate variability

long periodic variations in the earth s obliquity and their relation to third order eustatic cycles and late neogene glaciations abstract evolutive spectra of four high resolution climatic proxy records reveal that the spectral power in the obliquity frequency band increases during five well defined intervals in the last 5 3 million years these intervals correspond to periods of high amplitude variations in the tilt obliquity of the earth s axis connected with a 1 2 myr cycle and to sea level lowstands of third order eustatic cycles in the haq et al 1987 curve this implies that the development of major plio pleistocene glaciations proceeded episodically and that third order cycles are glacio eustatically controlled in at least two of these intervals sinistrally coiled neogloboquadrinids entered the mediterranean at times of glacial periods one interval starts around 2 8 ma and is characterized by the first occurrence of n atlantica s another interval begins at the plio pleistocene boundary around 1 8 ma and is characterized by the common occurrence of sinistrally coiled n pachyderma also during the late miocene third order cycles correlate well with the 1 2 myr cycle of obliquity a significant drop in the third order eustatic curve starting at the tortonian messinian boundary for instance coincides with a period of high amplitude variations in the obliquity time series connected with the 1 2 myr cycle

reconstruction of sea surface temperatures from assemblages of planktonic foraminifera multi technique approach based on geographically constrained calibration data sets and its application to glacial atlantic and pacific oceans abstract we present a conceptual framework for a new approach to environmental calibration of planktonic foraminifer census counts this approach is based on simultaneous application of a variety of transfer function techniques which are trained on geographically constrained calibration data sets it serves to minimise bias associated with the presence of cryptic species of planktonic foraminifera and provides an objective tool for assessing reliability of environmental estimates in fossil samples allowing identification of adverse effects of no analog faunas and technique specific bias we have compiled new calibration data sets for the north n 862 and south n 321 atlantic and the pacific ocean n 1111 we show evidence that these data sets offer adequate coverage of the sea surface temperature sst and faunal variation range and that they are not affected by the presence of pre holocene samples and or calcite dissolution we have applied four transfer function techniques including artificial neural networks revised analog method and simmax with and without distance weighting on faunal counts in a last glacial maximum lgm data set for the atlantic ocean 748 samples in 167 cores based on the glamap 2000 compilation and a new data set for the pacific ocean 265 samples in 82 cores and show that three of these techniques provide adequate degree of independence for the advantage of a multi technique approach to be realised the application of our new approach to the glacial pacific lends support to the contraction and perhaps even a cooling of the western pacific warm pool and a substantial 3 c cooling of the eastern equatorial pacific and the eastern boundary currents our results do not provide conclusive evidence for lgm warming anywhere in the pacific the atlantic reconstruction shows a number of robust patterns including substantial cooling of eastern boundary currents with considerable advection of subpolar waters into the benguela current a cooling of the equatorial atlantic by 5 c and steep sst gradients in the mid latitude north atlantic the transfer function techniques generally agree that subtropical gyre areas in both hemispheres did not change significantly since the lgm although the ann technique produced glacial sst in the southern gyre 1 2 c warmer than today we have revisited the issue of sea ice occurrence in the nordic seas and using the distribution of subpolar species of planktonic foraminifera in glacial samples we conclude that the norwegian sea must have been ice free during the summer

past hydrographic and climatic changes in the subantarctic zone of the south atlantic the pleistocene record from odp site 1090 abstract pleistocene summer sea surface temperatures ssst have been reconstructed on a composite core section recovered in the subantarctic zone of the southern ocean from planktonic foraminifers applying the modern analog technique the composite consists of core ps2489 2 and the sections recovered at odp site 1090 and documents the last 1 83 ma three distinct climatic periods can be identified that mirror the pleistocene development of the southern ocean hydrography cold climatic conditions prevailed at 43 s during glacial as well as during interglacial periods during the early pleistocene 1 83 0 87 ma indicating a northward shift of isotherms that characterize the present day polar front zone by about 7 of latitude evidence shows a strong linkage between southern ocean and low latitude climate during that interval time between the mid pleistocene revolution ca 0 9 ma and the mid brunhes event ca 0 4 ma we observe higher amplitude fluctuations in the ssst between glacial and interglacial periods corresponding to the temperature range between the present polar front and subantarctic front these climatic variations have been related to changes in the northern hemisphere ice sheets the past 0 4 ma are characterized by strong ssst variations of up to 8 c between glacials and interglacials only during the climatic optima stages 11 3 9 3 7 5 7 1 5 5 and the early holocene ssst exceeded present ssst at the core locality 10 2 c although the carbonate dissolution record exhibits high variability during the pleistocene it can be shown that ssst estimates were not significantly biased the mid brunhes dissolution cycle as well as the mid pleistocene enhanced carbonate preservation appear to belong to a global long term variability in carbonate preservation

iberian margin sea surface temperature during mis 15 to 9 580 300 ka glacial suborbital variability versus interglacial stability 1 past sea surface water conditions of the western iberian margin were reconstructed based on biomarker analyses of a marine deep sea core md03 2699 from the estremadura spur north off lisbon providing new insights into orbital and suborbital scale climate variability between marine isotope stage mis 15 to mis 9 580 to 300 ka we use biomarker based proxy records such as the alkenone unsaturated index to estimate sea surface temperature sst the total alkenone concentration to reconstruct phytoplankton productivity and terrestrial biomarkers to evaluate the continental input the results extend the existing biomarker record namely the sst for the iberian margin back to the sixth climatic cycle 580 ka a general trend of stable interglacials contrasts with glacial periods and glacial inceptions which are marked by high frequency variability thus several short lived climatic coolings were identified by large sst decreases the occurrence of ice rafted detritus and high percentages of the tetraunsaturated alkenone c37 4 some of these events were extremely cold and similar in their general trends to the well known heinrich events of the last glaciation we identified eight heinrich type events between 580 and 300 ka the general deglaciation pattern detected between mis 15 and mis 9 is similar in their general trends to that characterizing the more recent climatic cycles i e marked by two coolings separated by a short warming episode which may reflect the southward northward and southward migration of the polar front

atmospheric methane southern european vegetation and low mid latitude links on orbital and millennial timescales abstract pollen records from marine and terrestrial sequences in southern europe reveal a strong coherence between changes in tree populations and atmospheric methane concentrations over the last 800 thousand years variations in the continental hydrological balance provide a link for the observed patterns leading to concomitant changes in southern european vegetation and low latitude wetland extent and methane volatile organic compound emissions although additional contributions to the methane budget from extratropical sources are not excluded here we propose that the close coupling between low and mid latitude hydrological changes reflects shifts in the mean latitudinal position of the intertropical convergence zone which determines the extent to which southern europe is dominated by subtropical or mid high latitude influences this provides a conceptual framework within which to view vegetation variability in southern europe on orbital and millennial timescales

history of the last deglaciation in the alboran sea western mediterranean and adjacent north atlantic as revealed by coccolith floras abstract a series of cores recovered from the alboran sea western mediterranean and the adjacent part of the north atlantic has revealed very high rates of accumulation which have enabled us to identify the stages of the last deglaciation in great detail isotopic analyses of the cores show the two steps of the deglaciation terminations 1a and 1b separated by the bolling allerod warm phase 14 c dating of the cores has allowed the dating og the climatic succession we have identified each event of the deglaciation on the basis of changes in the coccolith flora especially in species of the genus gephyrocapsa such changes reflect surface water changes since coccolith live only in the photic zone the abundance of g muellerae in the cold intervals prior to each termination is greater than that in the bolling allerod and holocene warm intervals which follow the terminations coversely g oceanica is virtually absent during cold intervals but becoms more common during the warmer periods during the first deglacial warming there is a large influx of fine grained detrital material presumably derived from increased run off from the nearby mountains of southern spain and north west africa in the alboran sea cores with the most expanded sections there is a marked increase in the percentage of syracosphaera histrica at the beginning of this increase of detritus no increase was found in the atlantic core at this time

interglacial intensity in the north atlantic over the last 800 000 years investigating the complexity of the mid brunhes event the mid brunhes event mbe represents a step like increase between marine isotope stages mis 13 11 in the intensity of interglacial warmth a transect of palaeoclimatic records in the north atlantic from 40 n to the nordic seas indicates strong differences in the expression of the mbe within this region between 40 and 56 n sea surface and air temperature records suggest that all interglacials of the past 800 000 years were characterized by similar levels of warmth so there is no evidence for an mbe in these latitudes of the north atlantic north of 56 n there is increasing evidence for interglacials mis 19 13 being cold relative to mis 11 1 as most records of long term interglacial diversity suggest the mbe is a global event the north atlantic is clearly anomalous furthermore the strong spatial difference in temperature conditions during interglacials mis 19 13 in the north atlantic means that the temperature gradient across this region would have been enhanced in fact effectively doubled in magnitude during this interval copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

a paleoecological and paleobiogeographic evaluation of helicosphaera inversa gartner theodoridis and the diachrony of its first occurrence abstract the distribution pattern of helicosphaera inversa gartner theodoridis is examined from a mid latitude north atlantic core md01 2446 and two mediterranean cores ocean drilling program odp site 975 and core kc01b through marine isotope stage mis 13 to 9 the earliest rare occurrences are observed from the uppermost part of mis 12 while common and continuous abundances characterize mis 11 the paleoenvironmental framework of the study cores suggests that the taxon thrived in warm surface waters correlation with new data from planktonic foraminifera also suggests that h inversa may have only flourished within a limited salinity range comparison with previous findings highlights major diachrony in the fo of the taxon between low and mid latitude records it first occurred at lower latitude in the pacific as early as 0 8 ma while in the mid latitude north atlantic regions it is not recorded before 0 51 ma the distribution of the taxon in the north atlantic ocean also apparently varies in relation with surface water masses and hydrographic fronts the results suggest that the fo of h inversa is ecologically controlled and needs to be used with caution in worldwide stratigraphic correlation nevertheless the distribution of the species within the mediterranean basin can produce an invaluable ecostratigraphical signal

pronounced warmth during early middle pleistocene interglacials investigating the mid brunhes event in the british terrestrial sequence the mid brunhes event mbe is a climatic transition occurring between mis 13 and 11 that separates two climatic modes 1 early middle pleistocene interglacials 780 450 ka that are characterised by only moderate warmth and 2 middle and late pleistocene interglacials occurring after 450 ka that are characterised by greater warmth consistent with or warmer than the holocene this event is observable within a variety of long climate records such as specmap and epica but its effect on terrestrial systems is poorly understood the impact of this event is examined in the british terrestrial sequence by comparing the occurrence of a range of thermophilous plant and animal species and climate reconstructions derived from assemblages containing them from interglacials of the early middle pleistocene with those from the late middle and late pleistocene this comparison reveals that interglacial climates during the early middle pleistocene in britain were as warm as and in some cases warmer than those that occurred during the late middle and late pleistocene this interpretation is supported by sea surface temperature records in the north atlantic which show that temperatures during early middle pleistocene interglacials were at least as warm as those experienced during the holocene there is therefore no evidence in climate records of britain and the north atlantic for a mid brunhes event this suggests that the mbe is not a global climatic transition but is restricted to specific regions in particular the higher latitudes of the southern hemisphere further work is needed to understand the regional variability and cause of the mbe

abrupt climate events 500 000 to 340 000 years ago evidence from subpolar north atlantic sediments subpolar north atlantic proxy records document millennial scale climate variations 500 000 to 340 000 years ago the cycles have an approximately constant pacing that is similar to that documented for the last glacial cycle these findings suggest that such climate variations are inherent to the late pleistocene regardless of glacial state sea surface temperature during the warm peak of marine isotope stage 11 mis 11 varied by 0 5 to 1 c less than the 4 to 4 5 c estimated during times of ice growth and the 3 c estimated for glacial maxima coherent deep ocean circulation changes were associated with glacial oscillations in sea surface temperature

results of airborne vector 3 d gravimetry gravity field modeling using airborne vertical component gravimetry has made significant strides over the last decade we demonstrate the feasibility of extending this to three dimensions using data from inertial navigation systems ins and the global positioning system gps a significant advantage of measuring the horizontal gravity components is that the geoid can be determined in profiles by direct along track integration thus not only adding strength to conventional methods but reducing the required area of survey support especially along model boundaries as such the ultimate limitation of the method is in the quality of the ins and gps sensors in our test case all three components of the gravity vector were determined over a profile in the canadian rocky mountains differences between available truth data and the computed gravity components have standard deviations of 7 8 mgal horizontal and 3 mgal vertical these standard deviations include uncertainties in the truth data 5 mgal for horizontal 1 3 mgal for vertical the resolution in the computed values is about 10 km these analyses have demonstrated for the first time that the total gravity vector can be determined from airborne ins and gps to reasonable accuracy and resolution without any external orientation information nor prior statistical hypothesis on the gravity signature using medium accuracy ins and geodetic quality gps receivers

north atlantic millennial scale climate variability 910 to 790 ka and the role of the equatorial insolation forcing abstract the mid pleistocene transition mpt was the time when quasi periodic 100 kyr high amplitude glacial variability developed in the absence of any significant change in the character of orbital forcing leading to the establishment of the characteristic pattern of late pleistocene climate variability it has long been known that the interval around 900 ka stands out as a critical point of the mpt when major glaciations started occurring most notably in the northern hemisphere here we examine the record of climatic conditions during this significant interval using high resolution stable isotope records from benthic and planktonic foraminifera from a sediment core in the north atlantic integrated ocean drilling program expedition 306 site u1313 we have considered the time interval from late in marine isotope stage mis 23 to mis 20 910 to 790 ka our data indicate that interglacial mis 21 was a climatically unstable period and was broken into four interstadial periods which have been identified and correlated across the north atlantic region these extra peaks tend to contradict previous studies that interpreted the mis 21 variability as consisting essentially of a linear response to cyclical changes in orbital parameters cooling events in the surface record during mis 21 were associated with low benthic carbon isotope excursions suggesting a coupling between surface temperature changes and the strength of the atlantic meridional overturning circulation time series analysis performed on the whole interval indicates that benthic and planktonic oxygen isotopes have significant concentrations of spectral power centered on periods of 10 7 kyr and 6 kyr which is in agreement with the second and forth harmonic of precession the excellent correspondence between the foraminifera 18 o records and insolation variations at the equator in march and september suggests that a mechanism related to low latitude precession variations advected to the high latitudes by tropical convective processes might have generated such a response this scenario accounts for the presence of oscillations at frequencies equal to precession harmonics at site u1313 as well as the occurrence of higher amplitude oscillations between the mis22 21 transition and most of mis 21 times of enhanced insolation variability

extant calcareous nannoplankton in the australian sector of the southern ocean austral summers 1994 and 1995 abstract living calcareous nannoplankton in the region between australia and antarctica are distributed in five assemblages associated with distinct physico chemical properties of surface and subsurface water masses temperature and salinity ranges for living assemblages were 2 15 7 c and 33 7 35 56 respectively with maximum cell densities for austral summer 1994 found at 9 63 c and 34 44 and for austral summer 1995 at 12 8 c and 35 17 nutrients phosphate silicate and nitrate increase poleward and vertically from surface to depth abundance and diversity of calcareous nannoplankton decrease in a poleward direction with major shifts located across both the subtropical and the subantarctic fronts higher cell densities were found below 50 m equatorward of the subtropical front and above 50 m poleward of this front poleward of the antarctic divergence coccolithophores are absent from all samples three different morphotypes of emiliania huxleyi were identified one of which has a distribution associated with the subtropical front of the subordinate species syracosphaera spp calciosolenia murrayi and umbellosphaera tenuis dominate equatorward of the subtropical front with syracosphaera spp and calcidiscus leptoporus dominant poleward of this front a peculiar community of weakly calcified species is recorded for the first time outside the weddell sea

late quaternary caco3 production and preservation in the southern ocean implications for oceanic and atmospheric carbon cycling recent geochemical models invoke ocean alkalinity changes particularly in the surface southern ocean to explain glacial age pco2 reduction in such models alkalinity increases in glacial periods are driven by reductions in north atlantic deep water nadw supply which lead to increases in deep water nutrients and dissolution of carbonate sediments and to increased alkalinity of circumpolar deep water upwelling in the surface southern ocean we use cores from the southeast indian ridge and from the deep cape basin in the south atlantic to show that carbonate dissolution was enhanced during glacial stages in areas now bathed by circumpolar deep water this suggests that deep southern ocean carbonate ion concentrations were lower in glacial stages than in interglacials rather than higher as suggested by the polar alkalinity model broecker and peng 1989 our observations show that changes in southern ocean caco3 preservation are coherent with changes in the relative flux of nadw suggesting that southern ocean carbonate chemistry is closely linked to changes in deepwater circulation the pattern of enhanced dissolution in glacials is consistent with a reduction in the supply of nutrient depleted water nadw to the southern ocean and with an increase of nutrients in deep water masses carbonate mass accumulation rates on the southeast indian ridge 3200 3800 m and in relatively shallow cores 3000 m from the kerguelen plateau and the south pacific were significantly reduced during glacial stages by about 50 the reduced carbonate mass accumulation rates and enhanced dissolution during glacials may be partly due to decreases in caco3 corg flux ratios acting as another mechanism which would raise the alkalinity of southern ocean surface waters the polar alkalinity model assumes that the ratio of organic carbon to carbonate production on surface alkalinity is constant even if overall productivity in the southern ocean were held constant a decrease in the caco3 corg ratio would result in increased alkalinity and reduced pco2 in southern ocean surface waters during glacials this ecologically driven surface alkalinity change may enhance deepwater mediated changes in alkalinity and amplify rapid changes in pco2

3d inversion of airborne gravity gradiometry data using cokriging abstractwe developed a new method for interpretation of airborne gravity gradiometry data based on cokriging inversion the cokriging method that we evaluated minimized the theoretical estimation error variance by using auto and crosscorrelations of several variables it does not require iterations and can easily include complex a priori information moreover the smoothing effects in the inverted density structure model can be reduced to a certain extent due to the anisotropy constrain in the covariance model we compared the recovered models obtained by inverting the different combinations of gravity gradient components to understand how different component combinations contributed to the resolution of the recovered model the results indicated that including multiple components for inversion increased the resolution of the recovered density model and improved the structure delineation moreover in the case in which the parameters of the variogram model are not well chosen cokriging with multicompon

the gradient tensor of potential field anomalies some implications on data collection and data processing of maps the full gradient tensor is presently not measured routinely onboard airplanes or on land this paper describes some improvements that can be made in strategies of data collection and in processing of potential field maps if such tensor measurements were available we suggest that in addition to producing for example standard total field anomaly maps the invariants of the tensor be mapped strikes of magnetic or gravimetric structures may be determined from minimizing the power in the first row and column of the tensor invariants can be looked upon as nonlinear filters enhancing sources with big volumes their lateral resolution is superior to that of the field proper and for a given resolution the flight altitude and separation between flight lines can be increased compared with the standard mode of operation in airborne surveys the distance between flight lines is normally much larger than the height above the ground this may introduce severe aliasing effects in the direction perpendicular to the

variations in the structure of the anticyclonic gyres found in the alboran sea historical satellite aircraft and in situ data have shown that two anticyclonic gyres the western and eastern alboran gyres are major ocean features of the alboran sea an examination of several years of satellite imagery indicates that large variations in the surface expression of these two gyres occur and that on occasion one or the other gyre disappears the disappearance of both gyres at the same time was not seen the initial disappearance of either gyre occurs on a time scale of a week to 2 weeks whereas the return may take from 3 weeks to 2 months various forcing mechanisms i e winds mass flux inflow through the straits of gibraltar and sicily and or density have been used in numerical ocean circulation models to study the dynamics of the western mediterranean sea various model results show relationships similar to those shown by the satellite imagery however no single forcing mechanism has been positively identified as the source of the disappearances and the events may be a result of a combination of forcing mechanisms

a study of an intense density front in the eastern alboran sea the almeria oran front abstract studies of satellite imagery and space shuttle photographs of the western mediterranean have indicated that the main path of inflowing atlantic water is around two large anticyclonic gyres in the alboran sea and along the algerian coast these studies have also shown that a strong ocean front is present between almeria spain and oran algeria which is part of the easternmost segment of the eastern alboran gyre based on these satellite studies the first in situ investigation of the front called here the almeria oran front was conducted in march 1986 as part of the winter campaign of the western mediterranean circulation experiment wmce analyses of the resulting data show that the almeria oran front is a large scale density front formed by the convergence of two distinct water masses and controlled by the geographic position and strength of the eastern alboran gyre physical and biochemical data indicate that the front is limited to the upper 300 m with a strong southward baroclinic jet

hydrological impact of heinrich events in the subtropical northeast atlantic reconstructing the impact of heinrich events outside the main belt of ice rafting is crucial to understanding the underlying causes of these abrupt climatic events a high resolution study of a marine sediment core from the iberian margin demonstrates that this midlatitude area was strongly affected both by cooling and advection of low salinity arctic water masses during the last three heinrich events these paleoclimatic time series reveal the internal complexity of each of the last three heinrich events and illustrate the value of parallel studies of the organic and inorganic fractions of the sediments

present day coccolith fluxes recorded in central eastern mediterranean sediment traps and surface sediments two sediment traps were deployed in time series collection from november 1991 to august 1994 at 3000 and 3500 m respectively above and below the oxygenated sea water anoxic brine interface in the bannock basin central eastern mediterranean here the coccolithophore flux and its contribution to the carbonate particulate flux are presented for the 3000 m trap and compared with the record in eastern mediterranean surface sediments a marked seasonal variation is observed in the fluxes of total mass total coccoliths and whole coccospheres with flux maxima in late winter and spring the annual coccolith flux of 1 1010 coccoliths m 2 year 1 measured in the deep waters of bannock basin is much lower than published data from most other oceanographic settings even when corrected for the trap efficiency of 23 calculated from the 230th flux the biogenic and lithogenic fluxes are primarily controlled by coccolithophore production and saharan dust input respectively the calculated coccolith and coccosphere settling rates estimated from the comparison of maximum pigment concentration in the surface ocean and arrival of maximum flux at 3000 m water depth ranged from 17 to 25 m day 1 for coccoliths and 100 m day 1 for coccospheres at the study site carbonate dissolution is a minor process at both the trap depth and at the sea floor in both oxic and anoxic conditions and there is a high preservation of coccolith caco3 coccolithophores are the main contributor to the biogenic carbonate flux followed by thoracosphaerids emiliania huxleyi and florisphaera profunda followed by syracosphaera helicosphaera carteri and calcidiscus leptoporus are the dominant species in the sediment trap and surface sediments

inversion of airborne gravity gradient data southwestern oklahoma the diagonal elements of the gravity gradient tensor as recorded by the bell airborne gravity gradient survey system ggss are used to determine the basement topography in southwestern oklahoma this determination is accomplished through a nonlinear inverse procedure based on the conjugate gradient algorithm the resulting model contains a ridge of shallow basement material or 3 0 km deep trending east southeast this ridge is bounded on the north and the south by basement troughs the northern trough extends as deep as 10 0 km the gradient field which results from this model fits most of the ggss observations within their estimated errors of 12 0 e 1 eotvos 10 super 6 mgal cm the model is in general agreement with a set of available oil well depths to the basement and with inferred faults in these igneous rocks to assess the derived solution the problem was linearized about the final model and the linear parameter resolution and parameter covariances were computed generally the basement depths are well resolved and the resolution matrix is diagonally dominant furthermore the parameter standard errors are small 72 parameters out of 98 have errors less than 1 0 km

export production of coccolithophores in an upwelling region results from san pedro basin southern california borderlands a seven month long time series sediment trap project was carried out in san pedro basin southern california borderlands in order to evaluate the response of calcareous nannoplankton to seasonal hydrographic changes this region is periodically influenced by upwelling particularly during the spring and early summer the highest fluxes of both whole coccospheres and individual coccoliths occurred during winter january february a period when the fluxes of diatoms and planktic foraminifera were low the highest coccolithophore fluxes were recorded in the mid february with 860 106 coccoliths m 2 day 1 8 106 whole coccospheres m 2 day 1 and 80 mg of coccolith carbonate m 2 day 1 coccolith carbonate fluxes in january and february account for most of the total carbonate fluxes measured during this period the season of maximum coccolithophore production in this region winter is correlated with weak stratification of the upper water column low total primary production low nutrient contents and low temperatures emiliania huxleyi and florisphaera profunda are the two most abundant species in this region while e huxleyi displays no distinct seasonal changes in flux f profunda shows a clear preference for cold low nutrient water conditions and low light levels helicosphaera spp flux is positively correlated to the total coccosphere fluxes and is indicative of high coccolithophore productivity

millennial scale coccolithophore paleoproductivity and surface water changes between 445 and 360 ka marine isotope stages 12 11 in the northeast atlantic abstract a high resolution coccolithophore study was carried out in order to improve the understanding of the paleoceanographic evolution and changes in paleoproductivity occurring off the iberian margin im between 445 and 360 ka i e during late marine isotope stage 12 to 11 coccolithophore assemblages allowed reconstructing surface water changes characterized by millennial scale oscillations 1 5 kyr cycles involving portugal or iberian poleward currents pc and ipc prevalence changes in paleoproductivity possibly related to the upwelling of eastern north atlantic central waters enacw of sub tropical enacwst or sub polar origin enacwsp were also recognized this study also permitted detecting abrupt events stadial interstadial type oscillations and revealed that changes in paleoproductivity are related to opposite dynamics during glacial and interglacial stages with the reversed setting being established during the deglaciation furthermore a possible control of half and fourth precessional cycle components on the occurrence of abrupt changes within the assemblages structure during the deglaciation is proposed on the basis of wavelet analysis results applied to selected taxa

the mid pleistocene climate transition onset of 100 ka cycle lags ice volume build up by 280 ka the mid pleistocene climate transition mpt is the complex climatic change which brought the late pleistocene ice ages we explore the mpt in the time and frequency domains by new methods of time series analysis high resolution oxygen isotope records reveal that the ice volume related increase in 18o mean amplitude 0 29 0 05 1 transition midpoint 922 12 ka duration 40 9 ka significantly preceded the abrupt increase in the amplitude of the 100 ka cycle at 641 9 ka this finding can be quantitatively simulated using a simple ice bedrock model in which due to the additional ice the calving threshold is exceeded the simulated calving events prior to 650 ka are separated by 77 ka whereas after 650 ka they occur pseudo periodically with a mean period of nearly 100 ka the cause for the delay of the 100 ka calving cycle was not a slow bedrock relaxation rather the coincidental combination of insolation existing ice mass and bedrock depression