Glacial-interglacial oceanic changes in the central Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean during the past 500 ka

Abstract

Earth's climate has undergone dramatic changes between glacial and interglacial states troughout the past 500 ka years. In this regard, changes in the Southern Ocean, both in physical ocean circulation and biological productivity, are commonly thought to have played a critical role. However, paleoceanographic data from this oceanic region is sparse, thus rendering much of the understanding of the underlying processes incomplete, particularly for the central parts of the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. This thesis reconstructs interglacial-glacial scale oceanographic changes in the high latitude (~55 degrees S) central Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean with the aim to further improve the current understanding of climate dynamics. For this purpose, a number of proxy data were generated from marine sediment cores that were collected during R/V Polarstern cruise ANT-XXVI/2.