The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Response of the Pacific inter-tropical convergence zone to global cooling and initiation of Antarctic glaciation across the Eocene Oligocene Transition

Response of the Pacific inter-tropical convergence zone to global cooling and initiation of Antarctic glaciation across the Eocene Oligocene Transition
Response of the Pacific inter-tropical convergence zone to global cooling and initiation of Antarctic glaciation across the Eocene Oligocene Transition
Approximately 34 million years ago across the Eocene–Oligocene transition (EOT), Earth’s climate tipped from a largely unglaciated state into one that sustained large ice sheets on Antarctica. Antarctic glaciation is attributed to a threshold response to slow decline in atmospheric CO2 but our understanding of the feedback processes triggered and of climate change on the other contents is limited. Here we present new geochemical records of terrigenous dust accumulating on the sea floor across the EOT from a site in the central equatorial Pacific. We report a change in dust chemistry from an Asian affinity to a Central-South American provenance that occurs geologically synchronously with the initiation of stepwise global cooling, glaciation of Antarctica and aridification on the northern continents. We infer that the inter-tropical convergence zone of intense precipitation extended to our site during late Eocene, at least four degrees latitude further south than today, but that it migrated northwards in step with global cooling and initiation of Antarctic glaciation. Our findings point to an atmospheric teleconnection between extratropical cooling and rainfall climate in the tropics and the mid-latitude belt of the westerlies operating across the most pivotal transition in climate state of the Cenozoic Era.
Hyeong, Kiseong
8345472e-369b-4035-9c24-344fe2a73a69
Kuroda, Junichiro
54ebf90e-fff1-4de6-921d-88c3eccf8d6a
Seo, Inah
6b4bca92-3060-4321-aaf5-8aaf2b405c86
Wilson, Paul A.
f940a9f0-fa5a-4a64-9061-f0794bfbf7c6
Hyeong, Kiseong
8345472e-369b-4035-9c24-344fe2a73a69
Kuroda, Junichiro
54ebf90e-fff1-4de6-921d-88c3eccf8d6a
Seo, Inah
6b4bca92-3060-4321-aaf5-8aaf2b405c86
Wilson, Paul A.
f940a9f0-fa5a-4a64-9061-f0794bfbf7c6

Hyeong, Kiseong, Kuroda, Junichiro, Seo, Inah and Wilson, Paul A. (2016) Response of the Pacific inter-tropical convergence zone to global cooling and initiation of Antarctic glaciation across the Eocene Oligocene Transition. Scientific Reports, 6, [30647]. (doi:10.1038/srep30647).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Approximately 34 million years ago across the Eocene–Oligocene transition (EOT), Earth’s climate tipped from a largely unglaciated state into one that sustained large ice sheets on Antarctica. Antarctic glaciation is attributed to a threshold response to slow decline in atmospheric CO2 but our understanding of the feedback processes triggered and of climate change on the other contents is limited. Here we present new geochemical records of terrigenous dust accumulating on the sea floor across the EOT from a site in the central equatorial Pacific. We report a change in dust chemistry from an Asian affinity to a Central-South American provenance that occurs geologically synchronously with the initiation of stepwise global cooling, glaciation of Antarctica and aridification on the northern continents. We infer that the inter-tropical convergence zone of intense precipitation extended to our site during late Eocene, at least four degrees latitude further south than today, but that it migrated northwards in step with global cooling and initiation of Antarctic glaciation. Our findings point to an atmospheric teleconnection between extratropical cooling and rainfall climate in the tropics and the mid-latitude belt of the westerlies operating across the most pivotal transition in climate state of the Cenozoic Era.

Text
__userfiles.soton.ac.uk_Users_iastark_mydesktop_hyeong-2016.pdf - Accepted Manuscript
Download (1MB)
Text
srep30647.pdf - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (959kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 8 July 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 10 August 2016
Published date: 10 August 2016
Organisations: Paleooceanography & Palaeoclimate

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 400145
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/400145
PURE UUID: 54b14032-6516-4a42-8885-b1b6dc19357f
ORCID for Paul A. Wilson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6425-8906

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 12 Sep 2016 13:11
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:05

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Kiseong Hyeong
Author: Junichiro Kuroda
Author: Inah Seo
Author: Paul A. Wilson ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×