Publication Date:
2015-08-01
Description:
Earth's mightiest ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), regulates the exchange of heat and carbon between the ocean and the atmosphere, and influences vertical ocean structure, deep-water production and the global distribution of nutrients and chemical tracers. The eastward-flowing ACC occupies a unique circumglobal pathway in the Southern Ocean that was enabled by the tectonic opening of key oceanic gateways during the break-up of Gondwana (for example, by the opening of the Tasmanian Gateway, which connects the Indian and Pacific oceans). Although the ACC is a key component of Earth's present and past climate system, the timing of the appearance of diagnostic features of the ACC (for example, low zonal gradients in water-mass tracer fields) is poorly known and represents a fundamental gap in our understanding of Earth history. Here we show, using geophysically determined positions of continent-ocean boundaries, that the deep Tasmanian Gateway opened 33.5 +/- 1.5 million years ago (the errors indicate uncertainty in the boundary positions). Following this opening, sediments from Indian and Pacific cores recorded Pacific-type neodymium isotope ratios, revealing deep westward flow equivalent to the present-day Antarctic Slope Current. We observe onset of the ACC at around 30 million years ago, when Southern Ocean neodymium isotopes record a permanent shift to modern Indian-Atlantic ratios. Our reconstructions of ocean circulation show that massive reorganization and homogenization of Southern Ocean water masses coincided with migration of the northern margin of the Tasmanian Gateway into the mid-latitude westerly wind band, which we reconstruct at 64 degrees S, near to the northern margin. Onset of the ACC about 30 million years ago coincided with major changes in global ocean circulation and probably contributed to the lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that appear after this time.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Scher, Howie D -- Whittaker, Joanne M -- Williams, Simon E -- Latimer, Jennifer C -- Kordesch, Wendy E C -- Delaney, Margaret L -- England -- Nature. 2015 Jul 30;523(7562):580-3. doi: 10.1038/nature14598.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA. ; Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. ; EarthByte group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. ; Department of Earth and Environmental Systems, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809, USA. ; Department of Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, Waterfront Campus, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK. ; Ocean Sciences Department and Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26223626" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Antarctic Regions
;
Atmosphere/chemistry
;
Carbon/analysis
;
Carbon Dioxide/analysis
;
Climate
;
Fishes
;
Fossils
;
Geologic Sediments/chemistry
;
History, Ancient
;
Hot Temperature
;
Isotopes
;
Neodymium/analysis
;
Oceans and Seas
;
Seawater/analysis/chemistry
;
Tooth
;
*Water Movements
;
*Wind
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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