Dansgaard‐Oeschger and Heinrich event imprints in Alboran Sea paleotemperatures

Abstract

Abstract. Past sea surface temperature (SST) evolution in the Alboran Sea (western Mediterranean) during the last 50,000 years has been inferred from the study of C37 alkenones in International Marine Global Change Studies MD952043 core. This record has a time resolution of~200 years allowing the study of millennial-scale and even shorter climatic changes. The observed SST curve displays characteristic sequences of extremely rapid warming and cooling events along the glacial period. Comparison of this Alboran record with b180 from Greenland ice (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 core) shows a strong parallelism between these SST oscillations and the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Five prominent cooling episodes standing out in the SST profile are accompanied by an anomalous high abundance of Neogloboquadrina pachyderma sinistral which is confined to the duration of these cold intervals. These features and the isotopic record reflect drastic changes in the surface hydrography of the Alboran Sea in association with Heinrich events H1-5.

The meridional temperature gradient in the eastern North Atlantic during MIS 11 and its link to the ocean–atmosphere system

“…Our MIS 11c SST records of Site 975 were compared to the Holocene SST records from core MD95-2043 from the Alboran Sea ( Fig. 1; Table 1; Cacho et al, 1999).…”

The coastal archives of the last 15ka in the Atlantic–Mediterranean Spanish linkage area: Sea level and climate changes

“…coastal estuaries (Boski et al, 2002, in press), and the Ebro delta (Somoza et al, 1998), which augment the number of environments. Marine drill core information from Gulf of Cadiz and Alboran Sea (Cacho et al, 1999(Cacho et al, , 2001Sánchez-Goñi et al, 2002) suggests a elose synchronism between the rapid elimate changes reported in the North Atlantic and those recorded in lower latitudes.…”

“…Much information comes from coastal sectors studied in previous papers (e.g., Zazo et al, 1994Zazo et al, , 1999aZazo et al, c, 2005Borja et al, 1999;Dabrio et al, 1999Dabrio et al, , 2000Goy et al, 1996Goy et al, , 2003Lario et al , 2000Lario et al , , 2002Luque, 2002;YIl et al, 2003), and from Doñana-Huelva (Rodrí-guez-Ramírez et al, 1996Ruiz et al, 2005;Cáceres et al, 2006). The paper also ineludes data from Portuguese (Bard et al, 2000); M39-008 (Cacho et al, 2001; MD95-2043 (Cacho et al, 1999(Cacho et al, , 2001Sánchez-Goñi et al, 2002);H-658 C (de Menocal et al, 2000). coastal estuaries (Boski et al, 2002, in press), and the Ebro delta (Somoza et al, 1998), which augment the number of environments.…”

“…The reconstruction of SSTs in the Portuguese margin (e.g., Bard et al, 2000;Pailler and Bard, 2002), the Alboran Sea (Cacho et al, 1999) and the MidAtlantic at the same latitude (Chapman and Shackleton, 1998), recorded LGM winter temperatures that are only '"'-'5 oC less than modern SSTs, i.e., similar to mild periods (Bard et al, 2000). Study of the Spanish continental margin by Cacho et al (1999Cacho et al ( , 2001Cacho et al ( , 2002 revealed the occurrence of ice-rafted debris (IRD) during Heinrich events in the Gulf of Cadiz and polar waters in the Alboran Sea, with a decrease of SST around 12°C. SSTs descended sorne 4 oC during the y ounger Dryas.…”

Phenyl- and cyclopentylimino derivatization for double bond location in unsaturated C37-C40 alkenones by GC-MS

“…Cultures of these species showed that the proportion of di-and triunsaturated alkenones changed linearly with water temperature [5,6]. This finding and the ubiquity of C 37 -C 39 alkenones in recent and past marine sediments has led to the widespread use of the C 37 homologs for the estimation of sea surface temperatures in climate change studies [7][8][9][10]. This method has become, at present, a reference standard for the measurement of paleotemperatures in paleo-oceanography.…”