Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years
Deep Heating
Global warming is popularly viewed only as an atmospheric process, when, as shown by marine temperature records covering the last several decades, most heat uptake occurs in the ocean. How did subsurface ocean temperatures vary during past warm and cold intervals? Rosenthal et al. (p. 617) present a temperature record of western equatorial Pacific subsurface and intermediate water masses over the past 10,000 years that shows that heat content varied in step with both northern and southern high-latitude oceans. The findings support the view that the Holocene Thermal Maximum, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age were global events, and they provide a long-term perspective for evaluating the role of ocean heat content in various warming scenarios for the future.
Abstract
Observed increases in ocean heat content (OHC) and temperature are robust indicators of global warming during the past several decades. We used high-resolution proxy records from sediment cores to extend these observations in the Pacific 10,000 years beyond the instrumental record. We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. Although documented changes in global surface temperatures during the Holocene and Common era are relatively small, the concomitant changes in OHC are large.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Already a Subscriber?Sign In
Supplementary Material
Summary
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 to S8
Tables S1 to S3
References
Database S1
Resources
References and Notes
1
Wanner H., Beer J., Bütikofer J., Crowley T. J., Cubasch U., Flückiger J., Goosse H., Grosjean M., Joos F., Kaplan J. O., Küttel M., Müller S. A., Prentice I. C., Solomina O., Stocker T. F., Tarasov P., Wagner M., Widmann M., Mid- to Late Holocene climate change: An overview. Quat. Sci. Rev. 27, 1791–1828 (2008).
2
Leduc L., Schneider R., Kim J.-H., Lohmann G., Holocene and Eemian sea surface temperature trends as revealed by alkenone and Mg/Ca paleothermometry. Quat. Sci. Rev. 29, 989–1004 (2010).
3
Easterling D. R., Wehner M. F., Is the climate warming or cooling? Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L08706 (2009).
4
Levitus S., Antonov J., Boyer T. P., Stephens C., Warming of the World Ocean. Science 287, 2225–2229 (2000).
5
Levitus S., Antonov J. I., Boyer T. P., Baranova O. K., Garcia H. E., Locarnini R. A., Mishonov A. V., Reagan J. R., Seidov D., Yarosh E. S., Zweng M. M., World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0-2000 m), 1955-2010. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L10603 (2012).
6
Hansen J., Nazarenko L., Ruedy R., Sato M., Willis J., Del Genio A., Koch D., Lacis A., Lo K., Menon S., Novakov T., Perlwitz J., Russell G., Schmidt G. A., Tausnev N., Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science 308, 1431–1435 (2005).
7
Fine R. A., Lukas R., Bingham F. M., Warner M. J., Gammon R. H., The western equatorial Pacific: A water mass crossroads. J. Geophys. Res. 99, 25063–25080 (1994).
8
Gordon A., Oceanography of the Indonesian Seas and their throughflow. Oceanography 18, 14–27 (2005).
9
Talley L. D., Sprintall J., Deep expression of the Indonesian Throughflow: Indonesian intermediate water in the South Equatorial Current. J. Geophys. Res. 110, C10009 (2005).
10
Zenk W., Siedler G., Ishida A., Holfort J., Kashino Y., Kuroda Y., Miyama T., Müller T. J., Pathways and variability of the Antarctic Intermediate Water in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean. Prog. Oceanogr. 67, 245–281 (2005).
11
Wijffels S., Sprintall J., Fieux M., Bray N., The JADE and WOCE I10/IR6 Throughflow sections in the southeast Indian Ocean. Part 1: Water mass distribution and variability. Deep Sea Res. Part II Top. Stud. Oceanogr. 49, 1341–1362 (2002).
12
Sprintall J., Wijffels S. E., Molcard R., Jaya I., Direct estimates of the Indonesian Throughflow entering the Indian Ocean: 2004–2006. J. Geophys. Res. 114, C07001 (2009).
13
Rosenthal Y., Morley A., Barras C., Katz M., Jorissen F., Reichart G. J., Oppo D. W., Linsley B. K., Temperature calibration of Mg/Ca ratios in the intermediate water benthic foraminifer Hyalinea balthica. Geophys. Geochem. Geosys. 12, 1–17 (2011).
14
Morley A., Schulz M., Rosenthal Y., Mulitza S., Paul A., Rühlemann C., Solar modulation of North Atlantic central Water formation at multidecadal timescales during the late Holocene. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 308, 161–171 (2011).
15
Supplementary materials are available on Science Online.
16
Linsley B. K., Rosenthal Y., Oppo D. W., Holocene evolution of the Indonesian Throughflow and the western Pacific warm pool. Nat. Geosci. 3, 578–583 (2010).
17
Mohtadi M., Oppo D. W., Lückge A., DePol-Holz R., Steinke S., Groeneveld J., Hemme N., Hebbeln D., Reconstructing the thermal structure of the upper ocean: Insights from planktic foraminifera shell chemistry and alkenones in modern sediments of the tropical eastern Indian Ocean. Paleoceanography 26, PA3219 (2011).
18
Xu J., Holbourn A., Kuhnt W., Jian Z., Kawamura H., Changes in the thermocline structure of the Indonesian outflow during terminations I and II. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 273, 152–162 (2008).
19
Steinke S., Glatz C., Mohtadi M., Groeneveld J., Li Q., Jian Z., Past dynamics of the East Asian monsoon: No inverse behaviour between the summer and winter monsoon during the Holocene. Global Planet. Change 78, 170–177 (2011).
20
Dang H., Jian Z., Bassinot F., Qiao P., Cheng X., Decoupled Holocene variability in surface and thermocline water temperatures of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, 1–5 (2011).
21
Masson V., Vimeux F., Jouzel J., Morgan V., Delmotte M., Ciais P., Hammer C., Johnsen S., Lipenkov V. Y., Mosley-Thompson E., Petit J.-R., Steig E. J., Stievenard M., Vaikmae R., Holocene climate variability in Antarctica based on 11 ice-core isotopic records. Quat. Res. 54, 348–358 (2000).
22
Mayewski P. A., Rohling E. E., Curt Stager J., Karlén W., Maasch K. A., David Meeker L., Meyerson E. A., Gasse F., van Kreveld S., Holmgren K., Lee-Thorp J., Rosqvist G., Rack F., Staubwasser M., Schneider R. R., Steig E. J., Holocene climate variability. Quat. Res. 62, 243–255 (2004).
23
Bostock H. C., Barrows T. T., Carter L., Chase Z., Cortese G., Dunbar G. B., Ellwood M., Hayward B., Howard W., Neil H. L., Noble T. L., Mackintosh A., Moss P. T., Moy A. D., White D., Williams M. J. M., Armand L. K., A review of the Australian–New Zealand sector of the Southern Ocean over the last 30 ka (Aus-INTIMATE project). Quat. Sci. Rev. 74, 35–57 (2013).
24
Marcott S. A., Shakun J. D., Clark P. U., Mix A. C., A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years. Science 339, 1198–1201 (2013).
25
Mauritzen C., Melsom A., Sutton R. T., Importance of density-compensated temperature change for deep North Atlantic Ocean heat uptake. Nat. Geosci. 5, 905–910 (2012).
26
Oppo D. W., Rosenthal Y., Linsley B. K., 2000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool. Nature 460, 1113–1116 (2009).
27
Mann M. E., Zhang Z., Hughes M. K., Bradley R. S., Miller S. K., Rutherford S., Ni F., Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105, 13252–13257 (2008).
28
Moberg A., Sonechkin D. M., Holmgren K., Datsenko N. M., Karlén W., Lauritzen S.-E., Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature 433, 613–617 (2005).
29
Smith T. M., Reynolds R. W., Peterson T. C., Lawrimore J., Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land–ocean surface temperature analysis (1880–2006). J. Clim. 21, 2283–2296 (2008).
30
Orsi A. J., Cornuelle B. D., Severinghaus J. P., Little Ice Age cold interval in West Antarctica: Evidence from borehole temperature at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, 1–7 (2012).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Science
Volume 342 • Issue 6158 • 1 November 2013
Pages: 617 - 621
History
Received: 21 May 2013
Accepted: 30 September 2013
Copyright
Copyright © 2013, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
