Abstract
THE Earth's orbit about the Sun is influenced by gravitational interactions with the Moon and other planets. The resulting orbital perturbations give rise to cyclical variations in orbital eccentricity, obliquity and precession with periods of 100, 41, 19 and 23 kyr, respectively1. These variations are climatically important because they affect the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of solar radiation. Magnetic-susceptibility measurements in deep-sea sediment cores can be used as a sensitive indicator of temporal variations in the concentration of terrigenous material supplied to the sea bed. Here we use this approach to study the evolution of cycles of terrigenous sedimentation at Ocean Drilling Program sites in the Arabian Sea and the eastern tropical Atlantic. We show, from spectral analyses of the two susceptibility time series spanning the past 3.2–3.5 Myr, that the records are driven strongly by orbital forcing. Before 2.4 Myr before present (BP), both records are strongly influenced by the 23- and 19-kyr periodicities; but after 2.4 Myr, they are both significantly influenced by the 41-kyr periodicity. This shift coincides with the beginning of major Northern Hemisphere glaciation, which indicates, for the Indian Ocean site, that the supply of terrigenous sediment (carried by monsoonal winds) has responded to the rapid increase in ice cover at this time. We cannot, however, exclude possible effects of changes in bottom-water circulation on the susceptibility record of the Atlantic site.
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Bloemendal, J., deMenocal, P. Evidence for a change in the periodicity of tropical climate cycles at 2.4 Myr from whole-core magnetic susceptibility measurements. Nature 342, 897–900 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/342897a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/342897a0
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