A data-model comparison of shallow marine seasonality during the Mid-Pliocene
- 1Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 2School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
- 3School of Built and Natural Environment, University of Derby, Derby, United Kingdom
- 4Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Texel, Netherlands
- 5Institüt für Geologie und Paläontologie, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
- 6Institute of Geosciences, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
- 7Directorate Earth and History of Life, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
- 8Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, Netherlands
- 9Analytical, Environmental, and Geochemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
- 10Department of Earth Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Accurate projections of future climate scenarios require a detailed understanding of the behavior of Earth’s climate system under varying radiative forcing scenarios. The mid-Piacenzian Warm Period (mPWP; 3.3 – 3.0 Ma) was characterized by atmospheric CO2 concentrations comparable to present-day values (~400 ppmV), while global mean annual temperatures were roughly 2-3 degrees warmer compared to pre-industrial climate (Haywood et al., 2020). Seasonally resolved climate records from fossil bivalve shells offer a snapshot of short-term variability in temperature and salinity under the mild greenhouse conditions of the mPWP (Wichern et al., 2022).
In this study, we combine a large dataset of clumped isotope measurements incrementally sampled in fossil shells from the North Sea area during the mPWP with climate model simulations for the same time period using the PlioMIP model comparison framework. This combination of data and models allows us to test whether the climate models in PlioMIP can pick up the sub-annual scale variability in temperature and salinity (reconstructed via the oxygen isotope composition of the paleo-seawater). We show that, in contrast to continental reconstructions used in previous PlioMIP data-model comparisons (Tindall et al., 2022), our shallow marine data is reproduced well by PlioMIP models. On average, both model and data show considerably (4-5°C) warmer summer sea surface temperatures during the mPWP while winter temperatures remain relatively close to pre-industrial values. This suggests that the North Sea region can expect warming concentrated in the summer season in response to elevated atmospheric CO2 conditions.
References
Haywood, A. M., Tindall, J. C., Dowsett, H. J., Dolan, A. M., Foley, K. M., Hunter, S. J., Hill, D. J., Chan, W.-L., Abe-Ouchi, A., Stepanek, C., Lohmann, G., Chandan, D., Peltier, W. R., Tan, N., Contoux, C., Ramstein, G., Li, X., Zhang, Z., Guo, C., Nisancioglu, K. H., Zhang, Q., Li, Q., Kamae, Y., Chandler, M. A., Sohl, L. E., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., Feng, R., Brady, E. C., Von der Heydt, A. S., Baatsen, M. L. J., and Lunt, D. J.: A return to large-scale features of Pliocene climate: the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project Phase 2, Climate of the Past, 2020.
Tindall, J. C., Haywood, A. M., Salzmann, U., Dolan, A. M., and Fletcher, T.: The warm winter paradox in the Pliocene northern high latitudes, Climate of the Past, 18, 1385–1405, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1385-2022, 2022.
Wichern, N. M. A., de Winter, N. J., Johnson, A. L. A., Goolaerts, S., Wesselingh, F., Hamers, M. F., Kaskes, P., Claeys, P., and Ziegler, M.: The fossil bivalve <em>Angulus benedeni benedeni</em>: a potential seasonally resolved stable isotope-based climate archive to investigate Pliocene temperatures in the southern North Sea basin, EGUsphere, 1–53, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-951, 2022.
How to cite: de Winter, N., Tindall, J., Johnson, A., Goudsmit, B., Wichern, N., Huygen, F., Goolaerts, S., Wesselingh, F., Claeys, P., and Ziegler, M.: A data-model comparison of shallow marine seasonality during the Mid-Pliocene, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-4915, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-4915, 2023.
