Changes in the strength of Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation across repeated Eocene warming events

Abstract:

The Paleogene Period (~65 to 34 Ma) was a time of acute climatic warmth, with deep ocean temperatures exceeding 12°C at the height of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (~53 to 50 Ma). Multiple rapid warming events, associated with transient deep sea temperature increases of 2 to 4°C (termed ‘hyperthermals’), potentially related to orbital forcing of the carbon cycle and climate, occurred from the late Paleocene through at least the early middle Eocene and onset of long-term Cenozoic cooling (~47 Ma). While deep ocean circulation patterns associated with the great glaciations of the Plio-Pleistocene have been studied extensively, the behavior of the ocean’s overturning circulation on orbital-timescales in the extreme warmth of the early Cenozoic is largely unknown. Here we present new evidence for changing patterns of ocean overturning in the southern hemisphere associated with four orbitally paced hyperthermal events in the early-middle Eocene (~50 to 48 Ma) based on a combination of multi-site bulk carbonate and benthic foraminiferal stable isotope measurements and Earth system modeling. Our results suggest that southern-sourced overturning weakens and shoals in response to modest atmospheric carbon injections and consequent warming, and is replaced by invasion of nutrient-rich North Atlantic-sourced deep water, leading to predictable spatial patterns in deep-sea carbon isotope records. The changes in abyssal carbon isotope ‘aging’ gradients associated with these hyperthermals are, in fact, two to three times larger than the change in aging gradient associated with the switch in Atlantic overturning between the Last Glacial Maximum and today. Our results suggest that the Atlantic overturning circulation was sensitive to orbital-scale climate variability during Eocene extreme warmth, not just to interglacial-glacial climatic variability of the Plio-Pleistocene.