Julie N Richey

1400 yr multiproxy record of climate variability from the northern Gulf of Mexico

A continuous decadal-scale resolution record of climate variability over the past 1400 yr in the northern Gulf of Mexico was constructed from a box core recovered in the Pigmy Basin, northern Gulf of Mexico. Proxies include paired analyses of Mg/Ca and δ 18 O in the white variety of the planktic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber and relative abundance variations of G. sacculifer in the foraminifer assemblages. Two multi-decadal intervals of sustained high Mg/Ca indicate that Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were as warm or warmer than near-modern conditions between 1000 and 1400 yr B.P. Foraminiferal Mg/Ca during the coolest interval of the Little Ice Age (ca. 250 yr B.P.) indicate that SST was 2–2.5 °C below modern SST. Four minima in the Mg/Ca record between 900 and 250 yr B.P. correspond with the Maunder, Sporer, Wolf, and Oort sunspot minima, suggesting a link between changes in solar insolation and SST variability in the Gulf of Mexico. An abrupt shift recorded in both δ 18 O calcite and relative abundance of G. sacculifer occurred ca. 600 yr B.P. The shift in the Pigmy Basin record corresponds with a shift in the sea-salt-sodium (ssNa) record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice core, linking changes in high-latitude atmospheric circulation with the subtropical Atlantic Ocean.

Data for evaluating the Sr/Ca temperature proxy with in-situ temperature in the western Atlantic coral Siderastrea siderea

Massive corals are used as environmental recorders throughout the tropics and subtropics to study environmental variability during time periods preceding ocean-observing instrumentation. However, careful testing of paleoproxies is necessary to validate the environmental-proxy record throughout a range of conditions experienced by the recording organisms. As part of the USGS Coral Reef Ecosystems Studies project (http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/crest/), we tested the hypothesis that the coral Siderastrea siderea faithfully records sea-surface temperature (SST) in the Sr/Ca record throughout the subtropical (Florida, USA) seasonal cycle along 350 km of reef tract. The datasets included in this data release are comprised of data collected between 2009 and 2013. Coral samples were analyzed from thirty-nine corals growing in 3- to 4-meter water depths at Fowey Rocks (Biscayne National Park), Molasses Reef (Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, FKNMS), Sombrero Reef (FKNMS), and Pulaski Shoal (Dry Tortugas National Park). Temperatures were recorded with Onset® HOBO® Water Temp Pro V2 (U22-001) data loggers in duplicate at each site. Sr/Ca, Mg/Ca, calcification rate, and select underwater temperature data are provided here. The results of this experiment are interpreted in Kuffner et al. (in review). A larger temperature dataset, including the data provided here, is found in another data release Kuffner (2015), and a larger calcification-rate dataset is interpreted in Kuffner et al. (2013).