Mediterranean Sea Surface Radiocarbon Reservoir Age Changes Since the Last Glacial Maximum
Giuseppe Siani,1*
Martine Paterne,1
Elisabeth Michel,1
Roberto Sulpizio,3
Alessandro Sbrana,4
Maurice Arnold,12
Geoffrey Haddad5
Sea surface reservoir ages must be known to establish a common
chronological framework for marine, continental, and cryospheric paleoproxies, and are crucial for understanding ocean-continent climatic relationships and the paleoventilation of the ocean. Radiocarbon dates of planktonic foraminifera and tephra
contemporaneously deposited over Mediterranean marine and terrestrial
regions reveal that the reservoir ages were similar to the modern one
(~400 years) during most of the past 18,000 carbon-14 years. However,
reservoir ages increased by a factor of 2 at the beginning of the last
deglaciation. This is attributed to changes of the North Atlantic
thermohaline circulation during the massive ice discharge event
Heinrich 1.
1 Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de
l'Environnement (LSCE),
2 Unité Mixte de
Service, CNRS, Avenue de la Terrasse, F-91118 Gif-sur-Yvette,
France.
3 Centro di Studio per la Geologia
Strutturale e Dinamica dell' Appennino,
4 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Via S. Maria 53, 56126 Pisa, Italy.
5 TotalFina Elf, Centre Scientifique Jean Feger,
F-64018 Pau, France.
*
Present address: Laboratoire de Géochimie des Roches
Sédimentaires Université de Paris XI-Orsay, France.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
martine.paterne{at}lsce.cnrs-gif.fr
