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Science 6 April 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5821, pp. 66 - 69
DOI: 10.1126/science.1137127
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Review

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation During the Last Glacial Maximum

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz,1* Jess F. Adkins,2 William B. Curry,3 Trond Dokken,4 Ian R. Hall,5 Juan Carlos Herguera,6 Joël J.-M. Hirschi,7 Elena V. Ivanova,8 Catherine Kissel,9 Olivier Marchal,3 Thomas M. Marchitto,10 I. Nicholas McCave,11 Jerry F. McManus,3 Stefan Mulitza,12 Ulysses Ninnemann,13 Frank Peeters,14 Ein-Fen Yu,15 Rainer Zahn16

The circulation of the deep Atlantic Ocean during the height of the last ice age appears to have been quite different from today. We review observations implying that Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during the Last Glacial Maximum was neither extremely sluggish nor an enhanced version of present-day circulation. The distribution of the decay products of uranium in sediments is consistent with a residence time for deep waters in the Atlantic only slightly greater than today. However, evidence from multiple water-mass tracers supports a different distribution of deep-water properties, including density, which is dynamically linked to circulation.

1 Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
2 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
3 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
4 Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, 5007 Bergen, Norway.
5 Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3YE, UK.
6 CICESE, Oceanologia, 22860 Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico.
7 National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK.
8 Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 117997, Russia.
9 Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA/CNRS/UVSQ, 91198 Gifsur-Yvette Cedex, France.
10 University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
11 University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK.
12 Forschungszentrum Ozeanränder/MARUM, Universität Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany.
13 Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, 5007 Bergen, Norway.
14 Vrije Universiteit, 1081HV Amsterdam, Netherlands.
15 National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 116, Taiwan, Republic of China.
16 Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Spain.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jean{at}eas.gatech.edu

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