Premium
Mineral Dust Coupled With Climate‐Carbon Cycle on Orbital Timescales Over the Past 4 Ma
Author(s) -
Cao Mengmeng,
Wang Zhixiang,
Sui Yu,
Li Yanzhen,
Zhang Ze,
Xiao Anguo,
Zhang Rui,
Kemp David B.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2021gl095327
Subject(s) - benthic zone , carbon cycle , environmental science , oceanography , arctic , climatology , geology , atmospheric sciences , ecology , ecosystem , biology
The behaviors between δ 13 C benthic and δ 18 O benthic are anti‐phased after 6 Ma, and many mechanisms have been proposed to explain their behaviors. However, this question remains debated. Here, we reconstruct the interaction between mineral dust, global carbon cycle changes, and climate‐cryosphere system since 4 Ma. Our results suggest that Asian and/or global dust fluxes may have transported the signal of periodic Arctic ice sheet variability to the deep‐sea δ 13 C benthic record by mediating the strength of oceanic biological pumping. This can explain why δ 13 C benthic data show very similar orbital‐scale variability to δ 18 O benthic changes controlled by Arctic ice sheet variability. A sharp increase in global dust fluxes after 1.6 Ma resulted in a significant weakening of the 405 kyr long eccentricity variance in δ 13 C benthic data. We propose that mineral dust may have been one of the most important factors controlling the anti‐phase relationship between δ 13 C benthic and δ 18 O benthic over the past 6 million years.