Millennial-scale Atlantic/East Pacific sea surface temperature linkages during the last 100,000 years

Abstract

Amplifying both internally generated variability and remote climate signals from the Atlantic Ocean via coupled air-sea instabilities, the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) is well situated to detect past climate changes and variations in Central American wind systems that dynamically link the Atlantic and the Pacific. Here we compare new and previously published alkenone-based sea surface temperature (SST) reconstructions from diverse environments within the ETP, i.e. the Eastern Pacific Warm Pool (EPWP), the equatorial and the northern Peruvian Upwelling regions over the past 100,000 years. Over this time period, a fairly constant meridional temperature gradient across the region is observed, indicating similar hydrographic conditions during glacial and interglacial periods. The data further reveal that millennial- scale cold events associated with massive iceberg surges in the North Atlantic (Heinrich events) generate cooling in the ETP from ~8°N to ~2°S. Data from Heinrich event 1 however indicate that the response changes sign south of 2°S. These millennial-scale alterations of the SST pattern across diverse environments of the ETP support previous climate modeling experiments that suggested an Atlantic-Pacific connection caused by the intensification of the Central American gap winds, enhanced upwelling and mixing north of the equator and supported by positive air-sea feedbacks in the eastern tropical Pacific.