Reconstruction of east-west deep water exchange in the low latitude Atlantic Ocean over the past 25,000 years

Type Article
Date 2017-01
Language English
Author(s) Howe Jacob N. W.1, Piotrowski Alexander M.1, Hu Rong1, Bory Aloys2
Affiliation(s) 1 : Univ Cambridge, Dept Earth Sci, Downing St, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, England.
2 : Univ Lille, CNRS, Univ Littoral Cote Opale, UMR8187,LOG, F-59000 Lille, France.
Source Earth And Planetary Science Letters (0012-821X) (Elsevier Science Bv), 2017-01 , Vol. 458 , P. 327-336
DOI 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.10.048
WOS© Times Cited 11
Keyword(s) neodymium isotopes, Last Glacial Maximum, eastern Atlantic, western Atlantic
Abstract

Radiogenic neodymium isotopes have been used as a water mass mixing proxy to investigate past changes in ocean circulation. Here we present a new depth transect of deglacial neodymium isotope records measured on uncleaned planktic foraminifera from five cores spanning from 3300 to 4900 m on the Mauritanian margin, in the tropical eastern Atlantic as well as an additional record from 4000 m on the Ceara Rise in the equatorial western Atlantic. Despite being located under the Saharan dust plume, the eastern Atlantic records differ from the composition of detrital inputs through time and exhibit similar values to the western Atlantic foraminiferal Nd across the deglaciation. Therefore we interpret the foraminiferal values as recording deep water Nd isotope changes. All six cores shift to less radiogenic values across the deglaciation, indicating that they were bathed by a lower proportion of North Atlantic Deep Water during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) relative to the Holocene. The eastern Atlantic records also show that a neodymium isotope gradient was present during the LGM and during the deglaciation, with more radiogenic values observed at the deepest sites. A homogeneous water mass observed below 3750 m in the deepest eastern Atlantic during the LGM is attributed to the mixing of deep water by rough topography as it passes from the western Atlantic through the fracture zones in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This implies that during the LGM the low latitude deep eastern Atlantic was ventilated from the western Atlantic via advection through fracture zones in the same manner as occurs in the modern ocean. Comparison with carbon isotopes indicates there was more respired carbon in the deep eastern than deep western Atlantic during the LGM, as is also seen in the modern Atlantic Ocean.

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Publisher's official version 10 1 MB Open access
MMC 1. Supplementary description of XRF analytical methods as well as additional plots showing data for each core plotted against depth as well as the presence of turbidite layers and location of age 4 611 KB Open access
MMC 2. Data file containing the references for published data presented in the figures in this paper as well as the neodymium isotope data measured on the eight cores used in this work and XRF data... 81 KB Open access
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