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Traditionally, deep-sea ecosystems have been considered to be insulated from the effects of modern climate change, but with the recognition of the importance of food supply from the surface ocean and deep-sea currents to sustaining these systems, the potential for rapid response of benthic systems to climate change is gaining increasing attention. However, very few ecological time-series exist for the deep ocean covering the twentieth century. Benthic responses to past climate change have been well-documented using marine sediment cores on glacial-interglacial timescales, and ocean sediments have also begun to reveal that planktic species assemblages are already being influenced by global warming. Here, we use benthic foraminifera found in mid-latitude and subpolar North Atlantic sediment cores to show that, in locations beneath areas of major surface water change, benthic ecosystems have also changed significantly over the last ∼150 years. The maximum benthic response occurs in areas which have seen large changes in surface circulation, temperature, and/or productivity. We infer that the observed surface-deep ocean coupling is due to changes in the supply of organic matter exported from the surface ocean and delivered to the seafloor. The local-to-regional scale nature of these changes highlights that accurate projections of changes in deep-sea ecosystems will require (1) increased spatial coverage of deep-sea proxy records, and (2) models capable of adequately resolving these relatively small-scale oceanographic features.

Climate sensitivity is a key metric used to assess the magnitude of global warming given increased CO2 concentrations. The geological past can provide insights into climate sensitivity; however, on timescales of millions of years, factors other than CO2 can drive climate, including paleogeographic forcing and solar luminosity. Here, through an ensemble of climate model simulations covering the period 150–35 million years ago, we show that climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling varies between ∼3.5 and 5.5 °C through this time. These variations can be explained as a nonlinear response to solar luminosity, evolving surface albedo due to changes in ocean area, and changes in ocean circulation. The work shows that the modern climate sensitivity is relatively low in the context of the geological record, as a result of relatively weak feedbacks due to a relatively low CO2 baseline, and the presence of ice and relatively small ocean area in the modern continental configuration.

This work was supported by a NERC studentship awarded to C.L.O’B. and a NERC standard grant NE/H006273/1 awarded to R.D.P. (Principal Investigator) and G.L.F. (Co-Investigator). R.D.P. also acknowledges the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. M.A.M-B. gratefully acknowledges the support of the European Community through a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development. The western warm pools of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are a critical source of heat and moisture for the tropical climate system. Over the past five million years, global mean temperatures have cooled by 3–4 °C. Yet, present reconstructions of sea surface temperatures indicate that temperature in the warm pools has remained stable during this time. This stability has been used to suggest that tropical sea surface temperatures are controlled by a thermostat-like mechanism that maintained consistent temperatures. Here we reconstruct sea surface temperatures in the South China Sea, Caribbean Sea and western equatorial Pacific Ocean for the past five million years, using a combination of the Mg/Ca-, TEX86H- and Uk'37- surface-temperature proxies. Our data indicate that during the period of Pliocene warmth from about 5 to 2.6 million years ago, the western Pacific and western Atlantic warm pools were about 2 °C warmer than today. We suggest that the apparent lack of warmth seen in the previous reconstructions was an artefact of low seawater Mg/Ca ratios in the Pliocene oceans. Taking this bias into account, our data indicate that tropical sea surface temperatures did change in conjunction with global mean temperatures. We therefore conclude that the temperature of the warm pools of the equatorial oceans during the Pliocene was not limited by a thermostat-like mechanism. Postprint

Constraining past fl uctuations in global temperatures is central to our understanding of the Earth’s climatic evolution. Marine proxies dominate records of past temperature reconstructions, whereas our understanding of continental climate is relatively poor, particularly in high-latitude areas such as Antarctica. The recently developed MBT/CBT (methylation index of branched tetraethers/ cyclization ratio of branched tetraethers) paleothermometer offers an opportunity to quantify ancient continental climates at temporal resolutions typically not afforded by terrestrial macrofl oral proxies. Here, we have extended the application of the MBT/CBT proxy into the Cretaceous by presenting paleotemperatures through an expanded sedimentary succession from Seymour Island, Antarctica, spanning the latest Maastrichtian and Paleocene. Our data indicate the existence of a relatively stable, persistently cool temperate climate on the Antarctic Peninsula across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. These new data help elucidate the climatic evolution of Antarctica across one of the Earth’s most pronounced biotic reorganizations at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, prior to major icesheet development in the late Paleogene. Our work emphasizes the likely existence of temporal and/or spatial heterogeneities in climate of the southern high latitudes during the early Paleogene.