Glacial–interglacial Circumpolar Deep Water temperatures during the last 800 000 years: estimates from a synthesis of bottom water temperature reconstructions

Abstract

Future climate and sea level projections depend sensitively on the response of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to ocean-driven melting and the resulting freshwater fluxes into the Southern Ocean. Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) transport across the Antarctic continental shelf and into cavities beneath ice shelves is increasingly recognised as a crucial heat source for ice shelf melt. Quantifying past changes in the temperature of CDW is therefore of great benefit for modelling ice sheet response to past warm climates, for validating paleoclimate models, and for putting recent and projected changes in CDW temperature into context. Here we compile the available bottom water temperature reconstructions representative of CDW over the past 800 kyr. Estimated interglacial warming reached anomalies of +0.6 ± 0.4 °C (MIS 11) and +0.5 ± 0.5 °C (MIS 5) relative to present. Glacial cooling typically reached anomalies of ca. −1.5 to −2 °C, therefore maintaining positive thermal forcing for ice shelf melt even during glacials in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica. Despite high variance amongst a small number of records and poor (4 kyr) temporal resolution, we find persistent and close relationships between our estimated CDW temperature and Southern Ocean sea surface temperature, Antarctic surface air temperature, and global deep-water temperature reconstructions at glacial-cycle timescales. Given the important role that CDW plays in connecting the world's three main ocean basins and in driving Antarctic Ice Sheet mass loss, additional temperature reconstructions targeting CDW are urgently needed to increase temporal and spatial resolution and to decrease uncertainty in past CDW temperatures – whether for use as a boundary condition, for model validation, or for understanding past oceanographic changes.