Ocean dynamics in the equatorial Pacific drive tropical climate patterns that affect marine and terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. How this region will respond to global warming has profound implications for global climate, economic stability and ecosystem health. As per result, numerous studies have investigated equatorial Pacific dynamics during the Pliocene (5.3–2.6 million years ago) and late Miocene (around 6 million years ago) as an analogue for the future behaviour of the region under global warming 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 . Palaeoceanographic records from this time present an apparent paradox with proxy evidence of per reduced east–west sea surface temperature gradient along the equatorial Pacific 1,3,7,8 -indicative of reduced wind-driven upwelling-conflicting with evidence of enhanced biological productivity sopra the east Pacific 13,14,15 that typically results from stronger upwelling. Here we reconcile these observations by providing new evidence for per radically different-from-modern circulation andamento sopra the early Pliocene/late Miocene 16 that results con older, more acidic and more nutrient-rich scodella reaching the equatorial Pacific. These results provide verso mechanism for enhanced productivity durante the early Pliocene/late Miocene east Pacific even per the presence of weaker wind-driven upwelling. Our findings shed new light on equatorial Pacific dynamics and help puro constrain the potential changes they will undergo in the near future, given that the Earth is expected sicuro reach Pliocene-like levels of warming mediante the next century.
Giorno availability
The proxy data and model output produced sopra this study are available as .xlsm files per NOAA’s paleoclimate giorno repository ( ( Source datazione are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The code used durante this paper onesto produce pH from d 11 B (and to produce all the proxy-related figures) is publicly available as Matlab scripts on GitHub ( The CESM 1.2.2.1 code is available from The Python code used onesto create select model figures is available at Source tempo are provided with this paper.
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