Weddell Sea-derived Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is one of the most important deep water masses in the Southern Hemisphere occupying large portions of the deep Southern Ocean (SO) today. While substantial changes in SO-overturning circulation were previously suggested, the state of Weddell Sea AABW export during glacial climates remains poorly understood. Here we report seawater-derived Nd and Pb isotope records that provide evidence for the absence of Weddell Sea-derived AABW in the Atlantic sector of the SO during the last two glacial maxima. Increasing delivery of Antarctic Pb to regions outside the Weddell Sea traced SO frontal displacements during both glacial terminations. The export of Weddell Sea-derived AABW resumed late during glacial terminations, coinciding with the last major atmospheric CO 2 rise in the transition to the Holocene and the Eemian. Our new records lend strong support for a previously inferred AABW overturning stagnation event during the peak Eemian interglacial.

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Tectonics and regional monsoon strength control weathering and erosion regimes of the watersheds feeding into the Bay of Bengal, which are important contributors to global climate evolution via carbon cycle feedbacks. The detailed mechanisms controlling the input of terrigenous clay to the Bay of Bengal on tectonic to orbital timescales are, however, not yet well understood. We produced orbital-scale resolution geochemical records for International Ocean Discovery Program Site U1443 (southern Bay of Bengal) across five key climatic intervals of the middle to late Miocene (15.8-9.5 Ma). Our new radiogenic Sr, Nd, and Pb isotope time series of clays transported to the Ninetyeast Ridge suggest that the individual contributions from different erosional sources overall remained remarkably consistent during the Miocene despite major tectonic reorganizations in the Himalayas. On orbital timescales, however, high-resolution data from the five investigated intervals show marked fluctuations of all three isotope systems. Interestingly, the variability was much higher within the Miocene Climatic Optimum (around 16-15 Ma) and across the major global cooling (~13.9-13.8 Ma) until~13.5 Ma, than during younger time intervals. This change is attributed to a major restriction on the supply of High Himalayan erosion products due to migration of the peak precipitation area toward the frontal domains of the Himalayas and the Indo-Burman Ranges. The transient excursions of the radiogenic isotope signals on orbital timescales most likely reflect climatically driven shifts in monsoon strength. The continuous sediment archive recovered at International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Site U1443 in the Bay of Bengal (Figure 1) now allows a much more detailed study. Lübbers et al. (2019) established a high-resolution benthic stable isotope record from 13.5 to 8.2 Ma for Site U1443, which provides the climatic and stratigraphic framework to reconstruct Himalayan silicate weathering and its relationship to changes of the SAM and climate during the Miocene based on radiogenic isotope compositions of the clay size fraction. Since tectonics, climate, erosion, type, and intensity of weathering and monsoon strength can all affect the

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Radiogenic lead (Pb) and neodymium (Nd) isotope compositions have been successfully applied as sensitive and powerful palaeoceanographic proxies for the reconstruction of past circulation changes and water mass mixing for decades (

The late Miocene was an important period within the global Cenozoic cooling trend and was marked by extensive changes in marine and terrestrial environments and ecosystems (e.g.,

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