Sea-surface temperature reconstruction of the Quaternary western South Atlantic: new planktonic foraminiferal correlation function

Abstract

We provide a new multivariate calibration-function based on South Atlantic modern assemblages of planktonic foraminifera and atlas water column parameters from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the Subtropical Gyre and tropical warm waters (i.e., 60°S to 0°S). Therefore, we used a dataset with the abundance pattern of 35 taxonomic groups of planktonic foraminifera in 141 surface sediment samples. Five factors were taken into consideration for the analysis, which account for 93% of the total variance of the original data representing the regional main oceanographic fronts. The new calibration-function F141-35-5 enables the reconstruction of Late Quaternary summer and winter sea-surface temperatures with a statistical error of ~ 0.5°C. Our function was verified by its application to a sediment core extracted from the western South Atlantic. The downcore reconstruction shows negative anomalies in sea-surface temperatures during the early–mid Holocene and temperatures within the range of modern values during the late Holocene. This pattern is consistent with available reconstructions.