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Climate Impact of Late Quaternary Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Variations
David W. Lea,1*Dorothy K. Pak,1Howard J. Spero2
Magnesium/calcium data from planktonic foraminifera in equatorial
Pacific sediment cores demonstrate that tropical Pacificsea surface
temperatures (SSTs) were 2.8° ± 0.7°C colder thanthe present
at the last glacial maximum. Glacial-interglacialtemperature
differences as great as 5°C are observed over thelast 450 thousand
years. Changes in SST coincide with changesin Antarctic air
temperature and precede changes in continentalice volume by about 3 thousand years, suggesting that tropicalcooling played a major role in
driving ice-age climate. Comparisonof SST estimates from eastern and
western sites indicates thatthe equatorial Pacific zonal SST gradient
was similar or somewhatlarger during glacial episodes. Extraction of a
salinity proxyfrom the magnesium/calcium and oxygen isotope data
indicates thattransport of water vapor into the western Pacific was
enhancedduring glacial episodes.
1 Department of Geological Sciences and Marine
Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
2 Department of Geology, University of
California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
lea{at}geol.ucsb.edu
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Dirk Nürnberg (8 September 2000) Science289 (5485), 1698.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5485.1698] |Summary »|Full Text »
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