Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 323, Issue 5922, Pages 1714-1718Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1167625
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Funding
- NSF [OCE-0550439, OCE-0623487]
- U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science [DE-FG02-06ER64238, DE-FG02-08ER64590]
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation fellowship
- Flint Fellowship at Yale University
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The Pliocene warm interval has been difficult to explain. We reconstructed the latitudinal distribution of sea surface temperature around 4 million years ago, during the early Pliocene. Our reconstruction shows that the meridional temperature gradient between the equator and subtropics was greatly reduced, implying a vast poleward expansion of the ocean tropical warm pool. Corroborating evidence indicates that the Pacific temperature contrast between the equator and 32 degrees N has evolved from similar to 2 degrees C 4 million years ago to similar to 8 degrees C today. The meridional warm pool expansion evidently had enormous impacts on the Pliocene climate, including a slowdown of the atmospheric Hadley circulation and El Nino-like conditions in the equatorial region. Ultimately, sustaining a climate state with weak tropical sea surface temperature gradients may require additional mechanisms of ocean heat uptake (such as enhanced ocean vertical mixing).
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