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Holocene dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds and possible links to CO2 outgassing

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 650–655 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Southern Hemisphere westerly winds (SHW) play an important role in regulating the capacity of the Southern Ocean carbon sink. They modulate upwelling of carbon-rich deep water and, with sea ice, determine the ocean surface area available for air–sea gas exchange. Some models indicate that the current strengthening and poleward shift of these winds will weaken the carbon sink. If correct, centennial- to millennial-scale reconstructions of the SHW intensity should be linked with past changes in atmospheric CO2, temperature and sea ice. Here we present a 12,300-year reconstruction of wind strength based on three independent proxies that track inputs of sea-salt aerosols and minerogenic particles accumulating in lake sediments on sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island. Between about 12.1 thousand years ago (ka) and 11.2 ka, and since about 7 ka, the wind intensities were above their long-term mean and corresponded with increasing atmospheric CO2. Conversely, from about 11.2 to 7.2 ka, the wind intensities were below their long-term mean and corresponded with decreasing atmospheric CO2. These observations are consistent with model inferences of enhanced SHW contributing to the long-term outgassing of CO2 from the Southern Ocean.

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Fig. 1: SHW and wind anomalies in relation to the location of Macquarie Island
Fig. 2: Changes in relative strength of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds based on proxies in a sediment core from Emerald Lake.
Fig. 3: Comparison of Macquarie Island wind proxies with sea ice, temperature and CO2.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by NERC Standard grant NE/K004514/1 (D.A.H., S.J.R., L.S.), Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Postdoctoral Research Fellowship PZ00P2_136835/1 (K.M.S.), Swiss National Science Foundation Grant 200021_172586 (M.G.) and Australian Antarctic Science grants 3117 and 4156 (K.M.S.). K.M.S. was also supported by PhD funding as part of grant 2663 to A. McMinn, an Australian Postgraduate Award (2004–2008) and an Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering Postgraduate Research Award. The Australian Antarctic Division and the Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania provided logistical support and access to the Macquarie Island World Heritage Area. Field support was provided by A. O’Hern, A. Wakefield, C. Oosthuizen, B. Arthur, J. van Dorst, J. Pitcher, S. Williams, T. Blyth and Parks and Wildlife Service Rangers and volunteers. We thank H. Lu of the British Antarctic Survey for providing and adapting MATLAB scripts for sequential Mann-Kendall test analyses, A. Whittle for processing the wind data and underlying geotifs in Fig. 1a and b, and D. Fischer, S. Arcusa and N. Tunstall for technical support.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Institute of Geography and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

      Krystyna M. Saunders, Christoph Butz & Martin Grosjean

    2. Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Sydney, Australia

      Krystyna M. Saunders

    3. British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK

      Stephen J. Roberts, Bianca Perren, Louise Sime & Dominic A. Hodgson

    4. Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

      Sarah Davies

    5. Department of Biology, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium

      Wim Van Nieuwenhuyze

    6. Department of Geography, University of Durham, Durham, UK

      Dominic A. Hodgson

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    Contributions

    D.A.H., K.M.S. and S.J.R. contributed equally to this work. Fieldwork was carried out by K.M.S., D.A.H., S.J.R. and W.V.N. Analytical work was performed by S.J.R. (μ-XRF, sedimentology, chronology and statistical analyses) and S.D. (μ-XRF), K.M.S. and B.P. (D-I conductivity analyses, chronology and sedimentology), W.V.N. (fieldwork and diatom analysis), K.M.S., C.B. and M.G. (hyperspectral imaging) and L.S. (modelling). D.A.H., K.M.S., S.J.R. and B.P. wrote the manuscript and Supplementary Information with input from all authors.

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    Correspondence to Krystyna M. Saunders.

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    Saunders, K.M., Roberts, S.J., Perren, B. et al. Holocene dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds and possible links to CO2 outgassing. Nature Geosci 11, 650–655 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0186-5

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