Modern Pacific Coccolith Assemblages: Derivation and Application to Late Pleistocene Paleotemperature Analysis.

摘要

Factor analyses of relative abundance counts of coccoliths from selected Pacific Ocean core tops yield six assemblages that coincide with the following surface water masses and regions: (1) the Kuroshio system and Pacific Equatorial Water Mass; (2) the southern and northern central Pacific regions (both occupied by two assemblages), (3) the Western South Pacific Central Water Mass, and (4) the Subarctic Pacific and Intermediate Water Masses. The sixth assemblage represents a flora that is transitional between the subpolar and central Pacific regions in both hemispheres and that occurs as well within the Peru Current system. Transfer functions relating the assemblages to sea-surface temperatures were applied to coccolith populations that existed over the past 200.000 yr and that were taken from cores in the western equatorial Pacific (cores V28-238 and V28-239) and the eastern Pacific (core V19-55). The foregoing adds evidence to support the theory that sea-surface temperature over the past 200,00 yr has not globally varied sinusoidally but is subject to complex regional dynamics.