Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 6, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9659
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Norwegian Research Council [229819, 221712]
- Korea Polar Research Institute's Basic Research Project [PE15062]
- National Research Foundation of Korea Grant [2015M1A5A1037243]
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [MA3913/2]
- Statoil AS
- Statoil AS (via the Utsira Project)
- National Research Foundation of Korea [2015M1A5A1037243] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The globally warm climate of the early Pliocene gradually cooled from 4 million years ago, synchronous with decreasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In contrast, palaeoceanographic records indicate that the Nordic Seas cooled during the earliest Pliocene, before global cooling. However, a lack of knowledge regarding the precise timing of Nordic Seas cooling has limited our understanding of the governing mechanisms. Here, using marine palynology, we show that cooling in the Nordic Seas was coincident with the first trans-Arctic migration of cool-water Pacific mollusks around 4.5 million years ago, and followed by the development of a modern-like Nordic Seas surface circulation. Nordic Seas cooling precedes global cooling by 500,000 years; as such, we propose that reconfiguration of the Bering Strait and Central American Seaway triggered the development of a modern circulation in the Nordic Seas, which is essential for North Atlantic Deep Water formation and a precursor for more widespread Greenland glaciation in the late Pliocene.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available