Ventilation of the North Atlantic Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum: A comparison between simulated and observed radiocarbon ages

Creators: Meissner, K. J.; Schmittner, A.; Weaver, A. J.; Adkins, J. F.

Abstract

The distribution of radiocarbon during simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum with a coupled ocean-atmosphere-sea ice model is compared with sediment core measurements from the equatorial Atlantic Ceara Rise, Blake Ridge, Caribbean Sea, and South China Sea. During these simulations we introduce a perturbation of North Atlantic freshwater fluxes leading to varying strengths of the Atlantic meridional overturning. The best fit with the observations is obtained for an overturning weakened by 40% compared with today. Further, we simulate the phenomenon of an "age reversal" found in deep sea corals, but we suggest that this indicates rather a sudden interruption of deep water formation instead of an increase in ventilation, which was suggested earlier.

Additional Information

© 2003 American Geophysical Union. Received 28 January 2002; revised 27 September 2002; accepted 22 October 2002; published 8 April 2003. We would like to thank Lloyd D. Keigwin for providing his submitted manuscript and for his useful comments about the interpretation of his data. Two anonymous reviewers and Matthew England were extraordinarily helpful with an earlier version of this paper. Furthermore, we would like to thank Carl Wunsch for many useful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Michael Eby's technical support was very appreciated. We are grateful for research grant support under the NSERC Operating, Strategic, CSHD and CFCAS research grant programs. Dáithí A. Stone is gratefully acknowledged for editing English grammar.

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