ALBERT

Description: Arctic and subarctic regions are sensitive to climate change and, reversely, provide dramatic feedbacks to the global climate. With a focus on discovering paleoclimate and paleoceanographic evolution in the Arctic and Northwest Pacific Oceans during the last 20,000 years, we proposed this German–Sino cooperation program according to the announcement “Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of the Federal Republic of Germany for a German–Sino cooperation program in the marine and polar research”. Our proposed program integrates the advantages of the Arctic and Subarctic marine sediment studies in AWI (Alfred Wegener Institute) and FIO (First Institute of Oceanography). For the first time, the collection of sediment cores can cover all climatological key regions in the Arctic and Northwest Pacific Oceans. Furthermore, the climate modeling work at AWI enables a “Data-Model Syntheses”, which are crucial for exploring the underlying mechanisms of observed changes in proxy records.

Description: Quaternary East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) evolution has long been attributed to high‐latitude Northern Hemisphere climate change. However, it cannot explain the distinct relationships of the EAWM in the northern and southern East Asian marginal sea in paleoclimatic records. Here we present an EAWM record of the northern East China Sea over the past 300 ka and a transient climate simulation with the Kiel Climate Model through the Holocene. Both proxy record and simulation suggest anticorrelated long‐term EAWM evolution between the northern East China Sea and the South China Sea. We suggest that this spatial discrepancy of EAWM can be interpreted as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)‐like controlling, which generates cyclonic/anticyclonic wind anomalies in the northern/southern East Asian marginal sea. This research explains much of the controversy in nonorbital scale variability of Quaternary EAWM records in the East Asian marginal sea and supports a potent role of tropical forcing in East Asian winter climate change.

Description: Paleoceanographic evidence commonly indicates that Last Glacial Maximum surface temperatures in the Japan Sea were comparable to modern conditions, in striking difference to colder neighboring regions. Here, based on a core from the central Japan Sea, our results show similar UK′37‐ and TEXL86‐derived temperatures between 24.7 and 16.3 ka BP, followed by an abrupt divergence at ~16.3 ka BP and a weakening of divergence after ~8.7 ka BP. We attribute this process to a highly stratified glacial upper ocean controlled by the East Asian Summer Monsoon, increasing thermal gradient between surface and subsurface layers during the deglaciation and the intrusion of Tsushima Warm Current since the mid‐Holocene, respectively. Therefore, we suggest that threshold‐like changes in upper‐ocean temperatures linked to sea level rise and monsoon dynamics, rather than just sea surface temperatures, play a critical role in shaping the thermal and ventilation history of this NW Pacific marginal sea.

Description: Investigating the composition and distribution of pelagic marine sediments is fundamental in the field of marine sedimentology. The spatial distributions of surface sediment are unclear due to limited investigation along the Emperor Seamount Chain of the North Pacific. In this study, a suite of sedimentological and geochemical proxies were analyzed, including the sediment grain size, organic carbon, CaCO3, major and rare earth elements of 50 surface sediment samples from the Emperor Seamount Chain, spanning from ∼33°N to ∼52°N. On the basis of sedimentary components, we divide them into three Zones (I, II, and III) spatially with distinct features. Sediments in Zone I (∼33°N–44°N) and Zone III (49.8°N–53°N) are dominated by clayey silt, and mainly consist of sand and silty sand in Zone II. The mean grain size of the sortable silt shows that the hydrodynamic condition in the study area is significantly stronger than that of the abyssal plain, especially at the water depth of 1,000–2,500 m. The CaCO3 contents in sediments above 4,000 m range from 20 to 84% but decrease sharply to less than 1.5% below 4,000 m, confirming that the water depth of 4,000 m is the carbonate compensation depth of the study area. Strong positive correlations between Al2O3 and Fe2O3, TiO2, MgO, and K2O (R 〉 0.9) in the bulk sediments indicate pronounced contributions of terrigenous materials from surrounding continent mass to the study area. Furthermore, the eolian dust makes contributions to the composition of bulk sediments as confirmed by rare earth elements. There is no significant correlation between grain size and major and minor elements, which indicates that the sedimentary grain size does not exert important effects on terrigenous components. There is significant negative δCe and positive δEu anomalies at all stations. The negative Ce anomaly mainly exists in carbonate-rich sediments, inheriting the signal of seawater. The positive Eu anomaly indicates widespread volcanism contributions to the study area from active volcanic islands arcs around the North Pacific. The relative contributions of terrestrial, volcanic, and biogenic materials vary with latitude and water depth in the study area.

Description: The Pacific hosts the largest oxygen minimum zones (OMZ) in the world ocean, likely to intensify and expand under future climate warming, with consequences for ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles and living resources. Today, better-oxygenated subsurface North Pacific Intermediate Water mitigates OMZ development, but on instrumental time scales, data indicate decreasing NPIW ventilation, induced by surface freshening and increased stratification of seasonal thermocline water. However, longer variations in oceanographic boundary conditions were potentially large and hinder assessment of anthropogenic influences against natural background shifts. We previously provided evidence that modern well-ventilated waters underwent significant millennial-scale variations over the last ca. 12 ka, with a tipping point ca. 4.5 ka before present. Crossing this mid-Holocene threshold led to the Okhotsk Sea losing its modern ventilation source characteristics, although underlying forcing and physical boundary conditions remain largely enigmatic. A combination of sea ice loss, water temperatures, and remineralization rates may have conceivably induced a nonlinear switch into a different mean state in this region. To constrain these factors, we present surface ocean proxy records from Okhotsk Sea key study sites with multi-decadal resolution to assess changes in upper ocean stratification, nutrient characteristics and resulting mid-depth water ventilation. Our results imply that under assumed past warmer- than-present conditions, regional surface temperatures and upper ocean stratification were increased and changed in a nonlinear mode during the last ca. 6,000 years, associated with changing primary productivity patterns and biogeochemical feedback mechanisms. Complementary results from model simulations corroborate our results and provide evidence for close coupling the Okhotsk Sea and the North Pacific Subarctic Gyre, thus exporting marginal sea signals into large oceanic regions.

Description: In this study, organic geochemical analyses of two sediment cores (BL16 and LV63–23) recovered from the western Bering Sea were carried out to examine the sea-ice variability and its relationship to phytoplankton community evolution over the past century. Bulk stable organic carbon isotopic composition (δ13CTOC) showed pronounced depletion on the northern shelf since the late 1970s, indicating greater terrigenous organic matter (OM) under warming during recent decades. Variation in sedimentary OM in the southward core was closely associated with marine primary productivity and regional deposition processes. Arctic sea-ice proxy IP25 throughout the two cores with different temporal profile patterns demonstrated sea-ice presence with the spatiotemporal variability across the study area over the past century. The phytoplankton marker-IP25 index (PIP25), a proxy for estimating semi-quantitatively sea-ice concentrations, reflected a decreased sea-ice cover with more distinct interannual fluctuations between 0.7 and 0.2 (especially in core BL16) after the late 1970s, coinciding with the recent warming scenario. Increased concentrations of phytoplankton biomarkers (brassicasterol and dinosterol) and their ratios as well as the PIP25 record in core BL16 indicated a synchronous variability of reduced sea-ice cover with the enhancement of phytoplankton productivity since the late 1970s. These results suggested a coupled interaction of the sea-ice condition and planktonic ecosystem in the north Bering shelf. Our results also revealed recent (since the 2000s) spatial heterogeneity in sea-ice coverage between the northern and southern parts of the Bering Sea.

Description: The alkenone unsaturation index (Uk'37) as proxy for sea surface temperature (SST) is an important tool in paleoclimatology for reconstructing past ocean temperature variability. Typically, Uk'37 recorded in marine surface sediments shows a linear correlation with modern mean annual SST. However, in high-latitude oceanic regions, such as the subpolar Pacific, Uk'37-based SSTs do overestimate the mean annual temperature by up to 6 °C, potentially leading to obscured paleoclimatic information drawn from stratigraphic Uk'37-records. The reason for this “warm bias” is still not well understood. Here, we present a compilation of 97 sediment surface samples from Multicores collected in the Bering Sea, the Okhotsk Sea and the North Pacific to evaluate the alkenone-temperature proxy against observational data from the North Pacific. Sediment surface samples were analysed for alkenones and the derived Uk'37-indices converted to water temperatures using different calibration equations established in the literature. Uk'37-based SSTs were then compared to instrumental SST data, as well as modern alkenone flux data from sediment traps in the North Pacific. Our results confirm that most Uk'37-based SSTs from the subpolar Pacific are 2–6 °C too warm compared to instrumental mean annual SSTs for calibrations applied. However, with an uncertainty at the level of ±1.5 °C or less reconstructed SSTs fit quite well to modern autumn temperatures north of the Subarctic Front (SAF), when maximum export flux of alkenones to the seafloor is indicated by sediment trap data. South of the SAF, reconstructed SSTs largely mimic the modern mean annual SST signal with an uncertainty of ±1.5 °C or less, which is likely due to the attenuation of seasonality and longer growth season of coccolithophorids according to sediment trap data. Our study further demonstrates that Uk'37, when seasonality in alkenone production and export are known and considered, is able to provide reasonable estimates of SSTs in modern high-latitude ocean settings. We conduct a case study using available alkenone time-series derived from a sediment core collected from the south-western Okhotsk Sea to better understand the potential effect of seasonality in alkenone production on stratigraphic Uk'37-record in the subpolar Pacific. The case study from the Okhotsk Sea indicates that even a small shift in seasonality may lead to strongly biased SSTs with broader regional implications for paleoclimate reconstructions in high-latitude ocean settings.

Description: Millennial scale variations of terrigenous provenance in marine realm are closely related to regional environment and climate changes. Therefore, a wealth of information of past environment and climate can be constrained via fingerprinting sediment provenance. The Sea of Japan is a unique marginal sea in the North Pacific due to its high sill and distinct thermohaline circulation. The modern hydrography in the Sea of Japan is mainly affected by the East Asian Monsoon and Tsushima Warm Current, one branch of the Kuroshio Current. The Sea of Japan communicates with neighboring seas through four shallow and narrow straits, indicating great effects of global eustatic sea level change on its environment over glacial-interglacial cycles. Here we examine the terrigenous provenance in fine-grained fraction (〈63 μm) of core KCES1, located near one end of the Tsushima Strait of the Sea of Japan over the last 48 ka, using radiogenic isotopes of strontium (Sr) and neodymium (Nd). Our data suggest that the terrigenous provenance in core KCES1 was mainly derived from the Yangtze River after 7 ka and a mixture of Yangtze and Yellow Rivers during the last glacial and deglacial periods. Notably, pronounced negative excursions of εNd values at HS1 were attributed to minor additions of unradiogenic Nd contribution from China-Korea cratonic hinterland. A binary mixing model further reveals that 〉85% terrigenous material is derived from the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers over the last 48 ka. Moreover, abrupt variations in sediment provenance occurred at ~18 ka and ~ 7 ka, which coincide with variations in oceanic surface circulation and deep ventilation recorded in the Sea of Japan. We suggest that paleo-Tsushima Warm Current invaded into the Sea of Japan with reopening of the Tsushima Strait at HS1 and the Tsushima Warm Current substantially entered the Sea of Japan after 7 ka due to intensified Kuroshio Current and rising eustatic sea level. The inflow of Tsushima Warm Current gives rise to a range of changes in surface hydrography, deep ventilation, ecological communities and productivity and sediment texture. The combination of fluxes of paleo-rivers and the intensity of Kuroshio Current, which are closely tied to the eustatic sea level and the East Asian Monsoon, plays a key role in controlling the variations in sediment provenance in the Ulleung Basin. Our study provides unique insight into the tight coupling between changes in sediment provenance and oceanic environment over the last 48 ka in the Sea of Japan.

Description: As an integral part of the Earth's climate system, the Kuroshio Current (KC) plays a crucial role in shaping the regional oceanography and climate in the Northern Hemisphere. However, how the KC dynamics have varied over glacial-interglacial cycles is still under debate. The dynamic transfer and accumulation of submarine hydrothermal source materials by deep-reaching KC offer us a unique opportunity to examine the variations in dynamics of the KC. Here, we used novel proxies of sedimentary mercury (Hg) and antimony (Sb) in core MD01-2404 retrieved from the middle Okinawa Trough (OT) to reconstruct the evolution of the KC hydrodynamics over the last 92,000 years. We infer the enrichments of sedimentary Hg and Sb to signify hydrothermal input, which is delivered laterally to the study site by deep circulation in association with the KC, thus indicating the dynamics of KC. Overall, both the sedimentary Hg and Sb in core MD01-2404 indicate a persistent influence on the KC dynamics within the OT over the last glacial-interglacial cycles. Furthermore, our Hg and Sb proxies suggest a significantly weakened influence during the last deglaciation and last glacial period while a strengthened influence during the Holocene and late Marine Isotope Stage 5. Our studies imply that the orbital-scale dynamics of KC are controlled by tropical atmosphere-ocean interactions induced by sea surface temperature changes and regulated by the extratropical climate conditions.