Thermal structure of the northwest Atlantic during the Quaternary

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Ocean circulation is a critical component of the earth's climate system, which it affects via itscapacity to store and redistribute heat between the atmosphere, surface ocean, and deepocean. In particular, AMOC variability is linked to changes in the mean position of the IntertropicalConvergence Zone, regional warming in the Nordic Seas, and has even been invokedas a player in abrupt paleoclimate shifts. Ocean temperature is both a tracer and driver ofocean circulation, and given the strong link between ocean circulation and climate,determining the temperature evolution of the oceans is vital in order to develop a betterunderstanding of past climate change. Since modern observations are limited to the last ~150years at most, paleoceanographic proxies are required to reconstruct past changes in oceancirculation beyond the instrumental record. Over the last few decades there has beenremarkable progress in the development of elemental and isotopic proxies, includingrefinements in foraminiferal Mg/Ca and clumped isotope paleothermometry. When used incombination, these proxies have the potential to deliver robust estimates of oceanic thermalstructure and will therefore provide new insights into past ocean circulation that will enable thetesting and improvement of climate model simulations used for future predictions.