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Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch

Nature volume 431, pages 56–59 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

In the present-day climate, surface water salinities are low in the western tropical Pacific Ocean and increase towards the eastern part of the basin1. The salinity of surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean is thought to be controlled by a combination of atmospheric convection, precipitation, evaporation and ocean dynamics2, and on interannual timescales significant variability is associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation cycles. However, little is known about the variability of the coupled ocean–atmosphere system on timescales of centuries to millennia. Here we combine oxygen isotope and Mg/Ca data from foraminifers retrieved from three sediment cores in the western tropical Pacific Ocean to reconstruct Holocene sea surface temperatures and salinities in the region. We find a decrease in sea surface temperatures of ∼0.5 °C over the past 10,000 yr, whereas sea surface salinities decreased by ∼1.5 practical salinity units. Our data imply either that the Pacific basin as a whole has become progressively less salty or that the present salinity gradient along the Equator has developed relatively recently.

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Figure 1: Western tropical Pacific marine sediment core locations and corresponding climate records.
Figure 2: Reconstructed records for WTP sites.
Figure 3: Stacked (average value) (a) δ18Osw and (b) SST records from Fig. 2, with 1σ uncertainty envelope (grey).

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Rincon for analytical assistance. This research was supported by the US-NSF-OCE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, 90089, USA

    Lowell Stott, Kevin Cannariato & Steve Lund

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, 29205, USA

    Robert Thunell

  3. Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam, D-14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Gerald H. Haug

  4. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139, USA

    Athanasios Koutavas

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  1. Lowell Stott
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  6. Steve Lund
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lowell Stott.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Figure

This figure displays the AMS 14C ages for samples from sites discussed in the text. These AMS-depth values were used to calculate sediment accumulation rates for the sites and to estimate ages for samples through the core sequences. (DOC 33 kb)

Supplementary Table

Table of sample depth, age, G. ruber δ18Oc, G. ruber Mg/Ca, Mg/Ca-temperature estimate, and δ18OSW (SMOW) values calculated for samples from each of the Indonesian cores discussed in the manuscript. (XLS 92 kb)

Supplementary Discussion

This discussion describes how the age model for each site was established and gives details about the sediment accumulation rates in the Holocene. Details of the analytical methods are also described. (DOC 36 kb)

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Stott, L., Cannariato, K., Thunell, R. et al. Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch. Nature 431, 56–59 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02903

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