Deglacial temperature patterns in the Arabian Sea and mechanisms for Indian monsoon failure

Abstract:

Both paleoclimate data and climate model simulations demonstrate that the Indian monsoon system responds to remote coolings in the North Atlantic. The textbook examples are the stadial events associated with the last deglaciation — the Younger Dryas and Heinrich Stadial 1 — when the monsoon weakened dramatically and caused drying throughout the Indian Ocean rim. The mechanism by which the North Atlantic influences the monsoon system is not completely clear: locally cool SSTs, increases in continental albedo, and southward migration of the intertropical convergence zone have all been raised as possibilities.

Here we synthesize biomarker and foraminiferal estimates of temperature to study the evolution of the Arabian Sea water column during the deglaciation and test hypotheses of monsoon failure during stadials. Alkenone and Mg/Ca data clearly indicate that the Arabian Sea cools during the YD and H1, although H1 cooling is partly obscured by the overall warming trend associated with orbital forcing and rising greenhouse gases. In contrast, TEX86 data record warmings during the YD and H1. The stark difference between the TEX86 response and the alkenone and foraminiferal data, as well as comparison with climate model simulations, indicates that TEX86 is most likely acting as a subsurface temperature proxy in the Arabian Sea over these timescales.

Taken together, the paleoclimate data describe a pattern of surface cooling and subsurface warming in response to North Atlantic cooling. This oceanographic response is in excellent agreement with both timeslice and transient model simulations spanning the last deglaciation, and strongly supports the hypothesis that locally cool SSTs are a requisite for monsoon failure. Furthermore, subsurface warming causes a destratification of the Arabian Sea water column and provides a mechanism for previously observed reductions in productivity during stadial events.