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Published Online October 13, 2005
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1115933

Reports

Submitted on June 9, 2005
Accepted on October 5, 2005

The Mid-Pleistocene Transition in the Tropical Pacific

Martín Medina-Elizalde 1 and David W. Lea 2*

1 Department of Earth Science; Interdepartmental Program in Marine Science
2 Department of Earth Science; Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9630, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
David W. Lea , E-mail: lea{at}geol.ucsb.edu

A sea surface temperature (SST) record based on planktonic foraminiferal Mg/Ca from a site in the western equatorial Pacific warm pool reveals that glacial-interglacial oscillations in SST shifted from a period of 41,000 to 100,000 years at the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT), 950,000 years before the present. SST changes at both periodicities were synchronous with eastern Pacific cold tongue SSTs but preceded changes in continental ice volume. The timing and nature of tropical Pacific SST changes over the MPT implicates atmospheric greenhouse forcing as the cause of the switch in climate periodicities at this time.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)