IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v431y2004i7004d10.1038_nature02903.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Lowell Stott

    (University of Southern California)

  • Kevin Cannariato

    (University of Southern California)

  • Robert Thunell

    (University of South Carolina)

  • Gerald H. Haug

    (Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam)

  • Athanasios Koutavas

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Steve Lund

    (University of Southern California)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Lowell Stott & Kevin Cannariato & Robert Thunell & Gerald H. Haug & Athanasios Koutavas & Steve Lund, 2004. "Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch," Nature, Nature, vol. 431(7004), pages 56-59, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:431:y:2004:i:7004:d:10.1038_nature02903
    DOI: 10.1038/nature02903
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02903
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature02903?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Craig Loehle & J. Huston McCulloch, 2008. "Correction to: A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Tree Ring Proxies," Energy & Environment, , vol. 19(1), pages 93-100, January.
    2. Craig Loehle, 2007. "A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies," Energy & Environment, , vol. 18(7), pages 1049-1058, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:431:y:2004:i:7004:d:10.1038_nature02903. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.