Benchmark sedimentary records recovered from the Iberian margin during IODP Expedition 397

The Iberian margin is a well-known source of rapidly accumulating sediment that preserves a high-fidelity record of millennial climate variability. Previous studies of piston cores and IODP Site U1385 demonstrated that surface, and deep-water climate signals from the region can be correlated precisely to the polar ice cores in both hemispheres and with European terrestrial sequences. The continuity, high sedimentation rates, and fidelity of the climate signals recorded in Iberian margin sediments make this region a prime target for ocean drilling. The primary objective of IODP Expedition 397 was to extend these remarkable paleoclimate records beyond the range of existing piston and IODP cores -- currently limited to the last 1.5 million years. To this end, we recovered a total of 6176.7 m of core at four sites (U1586, U1587, U1385, and U1588) arranged along a bathymetric transect (4691, 3479, 2590 and 1339 mbsl, respectively) to intersect each of the major subsurface water masses of the eastern North Atlantic. The bathymetric transect provides an opportunity to study the history of deep-water circulation, ventilation and carbon storage in the deep eastern North Atlantic and its relationship to changing atmospheric CO₂. Sediments from all sites display strong cyclicity in bulk sediment properties, permitting the development of orbitally-tuned time scales and correlation with classic Mediterranean cyclostratigraphy. We will report on existing results from Site U1385 drilled during Expedition 339, new preliminary results from Expedition 397 sites (including the reoccupation of Site U1385), and discuss the future potential of Iberian margin sediments for providing benchmark paleoclimate records for the late Miocene through Quaternary.