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Unprecedented recent warming of surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Through its intimate connection with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation system, climate variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean influences climate across much of the planet. But the history of temperature change in the tropical Pacific Ocean during recent millennia is poorly known: the available annually resolved records1,2 are discontinuous and rarely span more than a few centuries. Longer records at coarser temporal resolution suggest that significant oceanographic changes, observed at multi-year to multi-century resolution, have had important effects on global climate3,4,5. Here we use a diatom record from El Junco Lake, Galápagos, to produce a calibrated, continuous record of sea surface temperature in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean at subdecadal resolution, spanning the past 1,200 years. Our reconstruction reveals that the most recent 50 years are the warmest 50-year period within the record. Because our diatom-based sea surface temperature index resembles Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions, we suggest that with continued anthropogenic warming, the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean may continue to warm.

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Figure 1: Maps of study area.
Figure 2: Time series of key El Junco diatom and pollen abundances.
Figure 3: El Junco T/E diatom values and climatic variables.
Figure 4: Comparison of El Junco T/E, tropical Pacific and Northern Hemisphere climate records.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the field assistance of M. Miller, J. Weiss, H. Barnett, T. Damassa, B. Fonseca and R. Smittenberg. Thanks to A. Cohen and J. Sachs for valuable discussion and helpful comments, W. Gosling for Galápagos climate data and M. Brenner and Z. Zhang for chronological data. Special thanks to the Galápagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Research Station for logistic support, The University of Arizona Department of Geosciences for extra funding and the University of Arizona AMS Facility for radiocarbon dates. This research was financially supported in part by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, as well as a grant from the Climate Program Office of NOAA.

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Authors and Affiliations

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Contributions

P.A.C. first discovered El Junco, named the lake, and motivated the current research. P.A.C., J.T.O., J.E.C., M.B.B. and M.S.-K. planned the project. J.T.O., M.S.-K., J.L.C. and P.A.C. participated in the expedition to the Galápagos. J.T.O. and J.L.C. collected the sediment cores. J.L.C. developed the age model, collected the diatom data and wrote the paper. A.R. collected the pollen data. All authors commented on the manuscript and helped analyse the results.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jessica L. Conroy.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information, Table S1

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Conroy, J., Restrepo, A., Overpeck, J. et al. Unprecedented recent warming of surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Nature Geosci 2, 46–50 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo390

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