Tropical Atlantic temperature seasonality at the end of the last interglacial

Felis, Thomas; Giry, Cyril; Lohmann, Gerrit; Pfeiffer, Miriam; Pätzold, Jürgen; Kölling, Martin; Scheffers, Sander

doi:10.1038/ncomms7159

Cited by 35 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Representation of tropical Atlantic SST seasonality during the LIG is so far limited to two coral studies from the Caribbean. A 4-year strontium/calcium (Sr/Ca) Montastraea faveolata record from 127 ka recorded SST seasonality 1 • C higher than present (Winter et al, 2003), while a 20-year Diploria strigosa Sr/Ca record at the end of the LIG (118 ka) reconstructed SST seasonality within the present-day range (Felis et al, 2015). Prior to the LIG, three Porites sp.…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sr/Ca variations within D. strigosa have been successfully demonstrated to replicate Caribbean instrumental temperature trends during the past century (Hetzinger et al, 2006(Hetzinger et al, , 2010, highlighting the importance of site specific modern day records for the interpretation of palaeoclimatic reconstructions. Our study benefits from being able to assess SST variability based on D. strigosa coral Sr/Ca records from Bonaire (southern Caribbean) in the context of the modern day, the midto late Holocene (Giry et al, 2012(Giry et al, , 2013 and the end of LIG (Felis et al, 2015). Our well preserved coral material allows further explorations of the factors affecting tropical Atlantic SST variability for multiple occasions throughout the LIG.…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LIG was punctuated by profound changes and instabilities. However, as demonstrated by a water hosing experiment performed on model simulations of LIG climate and a coral proxy record (Felis et al, 2015), temperature seasonality in the tropical Atlantic was relatively insensitive to the influences of monumental ice sheet loss (Blanchon et al, 2009), sea level rise (O'Leary et al, 2013), rapid reorganisation of oceanic currents (Galaasen et al, 2014), cold events (Mokeddem et al, 2014) and abrupt climatic shifts (Sirocko et al, 2005).…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We implement Sr/Ca palaeothermometry on precisely dated fossil specimens of D. strigosa corals that inhabited the shallow tropical waters of the southern Caribbean island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands). The annually banded aragonite skeleton of D. strigosa is suitable for precision microsampling techniques (Hetzinger et al, 2006(Hetzinger et al, , 2010Giry et al, 2010Giry et al, , 2012Giry et al, , 2013Felis et al, 2015). Coral Sr/Ca variations are a well-established proxy for SST variability on seasonal (Gagan et al, 1998), interannual (Felis et al, 2009) and multidecadal time scales (Linsley et al, 2000).…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Atlantic warm pool is denoted by SST contours of greater than 28.5 • C. (c) Adapted geological schematic of elevated reef terraces along the coastline of Bonaire (Kim and Lee, 1999). The corals used in this study were recovered from 4 sites on the lower terrace (d) that formed during the last interglacial period (Felis et al, 2015;Obert et al, 2016). (The reader is referred to the online version of this article for full colour reference and interpretation.)…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Brocas

Felis

Obert

et al. 2016

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Editor: M. Frank Keywords:coral Sr/Ca the last interglacial Caribbean climate sea surface temperature seasonality quasi-biennial to decadal variability Reconstructions of last interglacial (LIG, MIS 5e, ∼127-117 ka) climate offer insights into the natural response and variability of the climate system during a period partially analogous to future climate change scenarios. We present well preserved fossil corals (Diploria strigosa) recovered from the southern Caribbean island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands). These have been precisely dated by the 230 Th/Umethod to between 130 and 120 ka ago. Annual banding of the coral skeleton enabled construction of time windows of monthly resolved strontium/calcium (Sr/Ca) temperature proxy records. In conjunction with a previously published 118 ka coral record, our eight records of up to 37 years in length, cover a total of 105 years within the LIG period. From these, sea surface temperature (SST) seasonality and variability in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean is reconstructed. We detect similar to modern SST seasonality of ∼2.9 • C during the early (130 ka) and the late LIG (120-118 ka). However, within the mid-LIG, a significantly higher than modern SST seasonality of 4.9 • C (at 126 ka) and 4.1 • C (at 124 ka) is observed. These findings are supported by climate model simulations and are consistent with the evolving amplitude of orbitally induced changes in seasonality of insolation throughout the LIG, irrespective of wider climatic instabilities that characterised this period. The climate model simulations suggest that the SST seasonality changes documented in our LIG coral Sr/Ca records are representative of larger regions within the tropical North Atlantic. These simulations also suggest that the reconstructed SST seasonality increase during the mid-LIG is caused primarily by summer warming. A 124 ka old coral documents, for the first time, evidence of decadal SST variability in the tropical North Atlantic during the LIG, akin to that observed in modern instrumental records.

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Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Brocas

Felis

Obert

et al. 2016

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Fidelity of the Sr/Ca proxy in recording ocean temperature in the western Atlantic coral Siderastrea siderea

Kuffner

Roberts

Flannery

et al. 2017

Geochem Geophys Geosyst

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Massive corals provide a useful archive of environmental variability, but careful testing of geochemical proxies in corals is necessary to validate the relationship between each proxy and environmental parameter throughout the full range of conditions experienced by the recording organisms. Here we use samples from a coral-growth study to test the hypothesis that Sr/Ca in the coral Siderastrea siderea accurately records sea-surface temperature (SST) in the subtropics (Florida, USA) along 350 km of reef tract. We test calcification rate, measured via buoyant weight, and linear extension (LE) rate, estimated with Alizarin Red-S staining, as predictors of variance in the Sr/Ca records of 39 individual S. siderea corals grown at four outer-reef locations next to in-situ temperature loggers during two, year-long periods. We found that corals with calcification rates < 1.7 mg cm 22 d 21 or < 1.7 mm yr 21 LE returned spuriously high Sr/Ca values, leading to a cold-bias in Sr/Ca-based SST estimates. The threshold-type response curves suggest that extension rate can be used as a quality-control indicator during sample and drill-path selection when using long cores for SST paleoreconstruction. For our corals that passed this quality control step, the Sr/Ca-SST proxy performed well in estimating mean annual temperature across three sites spanning 350 km of the Florida reef tract. However, there was some evidence that extreme temperature stress in 2010 (cold snap) and 2011 (SST above coral-bleaching threshold) may have caused the corals not to record the temperature extremes. Known stress events could be avoided during modern calibrations of paleoproxies.Plain Language Summary Coral skeletons are used to decipher past environmental conditions in the ocean because they live for centuries and produce annual growth bands much like tree rings. Along with measuring coral growth rates in the past, coral skeletons can be chemically sampled to get even more detailed information, like past seawater temperatures. In this study we tested the validity of the strontiumto-calcium (Sr/Ca) temperature proxy in the Massive Starlet Coral (Siderastrea siderea) by sampling 39 corals that were grown in the ocean right next to instruments recording underwater temperature. We found that, as long as corals with very slow growth rates are avoided, the proxy performed well across an extensive region in the western Atlantic.

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Simulating climate and stable water isotopes during the Last Interglacial using a coupled climate‐isotope model

Gierz

Werner

Lohmann

2017

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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Understanding the dynamics of warm climate states has gained increasing importance in the face of anthropogenic climate change, and while it is possible to simulate warm interglacial climates, these simulated results cannot be evaluated without the aid of geochemical proxies. One such proxy is δ18O, which allows for inference about both a climate state's hydrology and temperature. We utilize a stable water isotope equipped climate model to simulate three stages during the Last Interglacial (LIG), corresponding to 130, 125, and 120 kyr before present, using forcings for orbital configuration as well as greenhouse gases. We discover heterogeneous responses in the mean δ18O signal to the climate forcing, with large areas of depletion in the LIG δ18O signal over the tropical Atlantic, the Sahel, and the Indian subcontinent, and with enrichment over the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. While we find that the climatology mean relationship between δ18O and temperature remains stable during the LIG, we also discover that this relationship is not spatially consistent. Our results suggest that great care must be taken when comparing δ18O records of different paleoclimate archives with the results of climate models as both the qualitative and quantitative interpretation of δ18O variations as a proxy for past temperature changes may be problematic due to the complexity of the signals.

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Tropical Atlantic temperature seasonality at the end of the last interglacial

Cited by 35 publications

References 67 publications

Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Fidelity of the Sr/Ca proxy in recording ocean temperature in the western Atlantic coral Siderastrea siderea

Simulating climate and stable water isotopes during the Last Interglacial using a coupled climate‐isotope model

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