Active Pacific meridional overturning circulation (PMOC) during the warm Pliocene

The warm, ~400-ppmv CO2 world of the Pliocene supported a northern-sourced meridional overturning cell in the Pacific. An essential element of modern ocean circulation and climate is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which includes deep-water formation in the subarctic North Atlantic. However, a comparable overturning circulation is absent in the Pacific, the world’s largest ocean, where relatively fresh surface waters inhibit North Pacific deep convection. We present complementary measurement and modeling evidence that the warm, ~400–ppmv (parts per million by volume) CO2 world of the Pliocene supported subarctic North Pacific deep-water formation and a Pacific meridional overturning circulation (PMOC) cell. In Pliocene subarctic North Pacific sediments, we report orbitally paced maxima in calcium carbonate accumulation rate, with accompanying pigment and total organic carbon measurements supporting deep-ocean ventilation-driven preservation as their cause. Together with high accumulation rates of biogenic opal, these findings require vigorous bidirectional communication between surface waters and interior waters down to ~3 km in the western subarctic North Pacific, implying deep convection. Redox-sensitive trace metal data provide further evidence of higher Pliocene deep-ocean ventilation before the 2.73-Ma (million years) transition. This observational analysis is supported by climate modeling results, demonstrating that atmospheric moisture transport changes, in response to the reduced meridional sea surface temperature gradients of the Pliocene, were capable of eroding the halocline, leading to deep-water formation in the western subarctic Pacific and a strong PMOC. This second Northern Hemisphere overturning cell has important implications for heat transport, the ocean/atmosphere cycle of carbon, and potentially the equilibrium response of the Pacific to global warming.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Science Advances

• Publication date

  2017-09-01

• Fields of study

  Geology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1126/sciadv.1700156PMID 28924606PMCID 5597313
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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