%D 2023
%A Gordon N Inglis
%A Rehemat Bhatia
%A David Evans
%A Jiang Zhu
%A Wolfgang Müller
%A David Mattey
%A David JR Thornalley
%A Richard G Stockey
%A Bridget S Wade
%V 50
%T Surface Ocean Cooling in the Eocene North Atlantic Coincides
With Declining Atmospheric CO2
%N 24
%X The Eocene (56–34 million years ago) is characterized by declining sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the low latitudes (∼4°C) and high southern latitudes (∼8–11°C), in accord with decreasing CO2 estimates. However, in the mid‐to‐high northern latitudes there is no evidence for surface water cooling, suggesting thermal decoupling between northern and southern hemispheres and additional non‐CO2 controls. To explore this further, we present a multi‐proxy (Mg/Ca, δ18O, TEX86) SST record from Bass River in the western North Atlantic. Our compiled multi‐proxy SST record confirms a net decline in SSTs (∼4°C) between the early Eocene Climatic Optimum (53.3–49.1 Ma) and mid‐Eocene (∼44–41 Ma), supporting declining atmospheric CO2 as the primary mechanism of Eocene cooling. However, from the mid‐Eocene onwards, east‐west North Atlantic temperature gradients exhibit different trends, which we attribute to incursion of warmer waters into the eastern North Atlantic and inception of Northern Component Water across the early‐middle Eocene transition.
%O This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images
or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license,
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%I American Geophysical Union (AGU)
%L discovery10184562
%J Geophysical Research Letters
%K Cenozoic temperature, multi-proxy, North Atlantic eocene, foraminifera