Selvaraj Kandasamy

A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era

Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850–2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high- and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python.

A 14.7 Ka record of earth surface processes from the arid-monsoon transitional zone of China

The stability of Earths critical zone is intimately linked with erosion, weathering and vegetation type and density. Therefore, it affects global biogeochemical processes which in turn affect the global climate by absorbing and reflecting solar radiation, and by altering fluxes of heat, water vapour, carbon dioxide and other trace gases through various feedback mechanisms. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how Earths critical zone processes have changed over time and their link with past monsoon variability, especially in Asia. The study of lake sediments, which contain a suite of inorganic elemental and isotopic proxies, may facilitate the understanding of the Earths critical zone processes on millennial timescales. Here we reconstruct the history of erosion-weathering-vegetation interactions since similar to 14.7 ka using geochemical records from a radiocarbon-dated sediment core from Lake Gonghai in the monsoon-arid transitional zone of north China. Detrital (Al, Ti, K, Rb) and authigenic (Ca, Sr) elemental records reveal distinct, millennial-scale, late deglacial-Holocene erosion and weathering patterns and transitions with the former (latter) elements showing higher (lower) values in warm intervals and vice versa. Chemical Index of Alteration (CIA) molar, a humidity proxy, suggests low humidity during the late deglacial similar to 11.5-14.7 ka, high humidity during the early-mid Holocene similar to 11.5-3.2 ka, and intermediate humidity during the late Holocene interval since similar to 3.2 ka. The results of cross-spectral analysis and comparison of our records with other climate reconstructions also suggest a pattern of orbitally-phased humidity changes in north China. Overall, our results provide evidence for the solar-forcing of Earths surface processes in mid-latitude China under natural climatic conditions. Copyright (C) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Perspectives on the terrestrial organic matter transport and burial along the land-deep sea continuum: Caveats in our understanding of biogeochemical processes and future needs

The natural carbon cycle is immensely intricate to fully understand its sources, fluxes and the processes that are responsible for their cycling in different reservoirs and their balances on a global scale. Anthropogenic perturbations add another dimension to such a complex cycle. Therefore, it is necessary to update the global carbon cycle by combining both natural and anthropogenic sources, fluxes and sinks along the land-sea continuum to assess whether these terms are currently in balance or not. Here, we review the export and it burial rates of terrestrial organic carbon in the oceans to understand the issue of “missing terrigenous carbon” by comparing data- and model-based estimates of terrestrial carbon fluxes. Our review reveals large disparities between field-based data and model output in terms of dissolved and particulate organic carbon/matter (OC/OM) fluxes and their ratios, especially for Oceania and Arctic rivers, suggesting the need of additional investigations in these regions to refine terrestrial OC export budget. Based on our budgeting of global sources and sinks of OC with updated estimates of marine productivity and terrestrial OM burial rate, we find that the marginal sediments are key burial sites of terrestrial OM, which is consistent with earlier views of Berner (1982) and Hedges and Keil (1995). While about 60‒80% of TOM is remineralized in the margins, the estimated budget further reveals the ocean derived OM is efficiently remineralized than that of terrestrial OM, emphasizing the need of further improvements of carbon burial estimation in the marine realm. When we look back in the past, higher terrestrial OC burial (by ~50%) in the deep ocean during the glacials than during the interglacials suggests the subdued role of continental margins and an efficient transfer of OM from the shelf to deep sea in glacials. Based on the review of terrestrial and marine OM burial, we suggest some critical regions/ways that need to be investigated/addressed further, identification of new biogeochemical proxies and their grouping to better constrain the global carbon cycle along the land-deep sea continuum in future.

Persistent effects of the Yellow River on the Chinese marginal seas began at least ~880 ka ago

The Yellow River (or Huanghe and also known as China’s Sorrow in ancient times), with the highest sediment load in the world, provides a key link between continental erosion and sediment accumulation in the western Pacific Ocean. However, the exact age of its influence on the marginal sea is highly controversial and uncertain. Here we present high-resolution records of clay minerals and lanthanum to samarium (La/Sm) ratio spanning the past ~1 million years (Myr) from the Bohai and Yellow Seas, the potential sedimentary sinks of the Yellow River. Our results show a climate-driven provenance shift from small, proximal mountain rivers-dominance to the Yellow River-dominance at ~880 ka, a time period consistent with the Mid-Pleistocene orbital shift from 41-kyr to 100-kyr cyclicity. We compare the age of this provenance shift with the available age data for Yellow River headwater integration into the marginal seas and suggest that the persistent influence of the Yellow River on the Chinese marginal seas must have occurred at least ~880 ka ago. To our knowledge, this study provides the first offshore evidence on the drainage history of the Yellow River within an accurate chronology framework.

Submarine groundwater discharge around Taiwan

A preliminary study shows that the submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) exists around Taiwan even though groundwater overdrawing on the island is serious. Fifteen of the 20 sites studied for major anions and cations recorded a clear SGD signal with freshwater outflow. A total of 278 salinity and major ion measurements were made. Sixteen nearly freshwater SGD (salinity⩽1.0) samples were obtained, providing strong and direct evidence for the existence of fresh meteoric groundwater entering the ocean from Taiwan. The total SGD flux is estimated to be 1.07×1010 t/a which is about 14% of the annual river output. The freshwater component of the SGD is 3.85×109 t which is about 5.2% of the annual river discharge in Taiwan. The collected SGD has a composition similar to seawater with an addition of Ca, CO3 and HCO3 due to dissolution of calcareous rocks. Some samples with high Cl/(Na+K) may indicate pollution.

Submarine Groundwater Discharge helps making nearshore waters heterotrophic

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is the submarine seepage of all fluids from coastal sediments into the overlying coastal seas. It has been well documented that the SGD may contribute a great deal of allochthonous nutrients to the coastlines. It is, however, less known how much carbon enters the ocean via the SGD. Nutrients (NO3, NO2, NH4, PO4, SiO2), alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the submarine groundwater were measured at 20 locations around Taiwan for the first time. The total N/P/Si yields from the SGD in Taiwan are respectively 3.28 ± 2.3 × 104, 2.6 ± 1.8 × 102 and 1.89 ± 1.33 × 104 mol/km2/a, compared with 9.5 ± 6.7 × 105 mol/km2/a for alkalinity and 8.8 ± 6.2 × 105 mol/km2/a for DIC. To compare with literature data, yields for the major estuary across the Taiwan Strait (Jiulong River) are comparable except for P which is extremely low. Primary production supported by these nutrient outflows is insufficient to compensate the DIC supplied by the SGD. As a result, the SGD helps making the coastal waters in Taiwan and Jiulong River heterotrophic.

Data Descriptor: A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era

PAGES, a core project of Future Earth, is supported by the U.S. and Swiss National Science Foundations. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. Some of this work was conducted as part of the North America 2k Working Group supported by the John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey. B. Bauer, W. Gross, and E. Gille (NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information) are gratefully acknowledged for helping assemble the data citations and creating the NCEI versions of the PAGES 2k data records. We thank all the investigators whose commitment to data sharing enables the open science ethos embodied by this project.

Commentary: Biogeochemical analysis of ancient Pacific Cod bone suggests Hg bioaccumulation was linked to Paleo sea level rise and climate change

Citation: Kandasamy S and Weis P (2015) Commentary: Biogeochemical analysis of ancient Pacific Cod bone suggests Hg bioaccumulation was linked to Paleo sea level rise and climate change. Over the last 21,000 years, continuous and pulsed sea level rises from its glacial minimum of ∼120 m below the present sea level have affected the continental configuration of Earths surface and thus land-sea interactions, materials exchanges and related biogeochemical processes. In this article, Murray and co-authors investigated total concentration of mercury (Hg) and stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (δ 13 C and δ 15 N) in the bone collagen of archeologically recovered Pacific Cod (Gadus macrocephalus) and found high levels of total Hg in bones deposited during the early-mid Holocene interval. The authors suggested that the coastal flooding likely led to increased methylation of Hg in newly submerged terrestrial land and vegetation and thus high total Hg in bones. This study provides a clue that the coastal flooding due to future climate change may have the potential to enhance the amount of Hg significantly in marine food webs in the North Pacific region. Also of interest is the increase in methylmercury in receiving waters immediately following the flooding of previously dried wetlands, as occurred at the end of the last ice age on the continental shelves. It has been well-documented in the literature that flooding of wetlands leads to release of the sequestered methylmercury (and demonstrated experimentally by Porvari and Verta, 1995); the authors have acknowledged that this is the logical explanation to the higher levels they found in the older bones. It is unfortunate, however, that the authors chose muscle tissue to analyze in modern fish for comparison with the fossil bones. Nevertheless, an understanding of historical trends in contamination is always welcome. From stable isotopes point of view, it has been inferred based on increased carbon isotopic ratios since the mid-Holocene that shelf flooding due to sea level rise must have transferred the productivity regime from an oceanic to a shelf system. Furthermore, the authors suggested that the increase in δ 13 C may have resulted to increased phytoplankton growth rates or a change from pelagic to benthic foraging regime. δ 13 C-values in both pelagic and benthic planktons are ranging roughly from −18 to −21‰ and if one includes all suspended particles, surface sediments and ice algae investigated during both summer and winter seasons in north-central Bering Sea, …