Sinnesael, Matthias;
Karatsolis, Boris-Theofanis;
Pearson, Paul N;
Briais, Anne;
Hemming, Sidney R;
LeVay, Leah J;
Dunkley Jones, Tom;
... Parnell-Turner, Ross E; + view all
(2025)
Onset of strong Iceland-Scotland overflow
water 3.6 million years ago.
Nature Communications
, 16
, Article 4323. 10.1038/s41467-025-59265-5.
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Abstract
North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), the return flow component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), is a major inter-hemispheric ocean water mass with strong climate effects but the evolution of its source components on million-year timescales is poorly known. Today, two major NADW components that flow southward over volcanic ridges to the east and west of Iceland are associated with distinct contourite drift systems that are forming off the coast of Greenland and on the eastern flank of the Reykjanes (mid-Atlantic) Ridge. Here we provide direct records of the early history of this drift sedimentation based on cores collected during International Ocean Discovery Programme (IODP) Expeditions 395C and 395. We find rapid acceleration of drift deposition linked to the eastern component of NADW, known as Iceland–Scotland Overflow Water at 3.6 million years ago (Ma). In contrast, the Denmark Strait Overflow Water feeding the western Eirik Drift has been persistent since the Late Miocene. These observations constrain the long-term evolution of the two NADW components, revealing their contrasting independent histories and allowing their links with climatic events such as Northern Hemisphere cooling at 3.6 Ma, to be assessed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Onset of strong Iceland-Scotland overflow water 3.6 million years ago |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-025-59265-5 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59265-5 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Palaeoceanography, Palaeoclimate |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208356 |
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