Climate and geodynamic control of past changes in thermohaline circulation and faunal exchange through the Denmark Strait

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The Denmark Strait and Iceland-Scotland Ridge serve as gateways for giant currents of intermediate water flowing from the European Nordic Seas into the North Atlantic. This 'Overflow' forms a main deepwater source for the global ocean. At the same time it leads to the advection of warm and highly saline surface water from the Atlantic into the Nordic Seas and thus, to todays fairly warm, but highly variable climate in Europe. It is the objective of this study to trace the variablity of the thermohaline circulation system focussed in the Denmark Strait at multidecadal resolution over geological times, specifically for the last 80.000 years and for some of the major warm interglacial stages in the Pleistocene and Late Pliocene. This especially implies the reconstruction of the paleosalinity and density gradients in the surface layer and of the differential quality and paleo-14C ages of the Overflow water in the deep ocean... Global teleconnections of centennial-to-millennialscale climate change between high and low-latitude sites will be reconstucted together with Themes B and C, using a joint ultrahigh-resolution time scale bases onD-0 and Milankovitch cycles.