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Organic biomarker records spanning the last 34,800 years from the southeastern Brazilian upper slope: links between sea surface temperature, displacement of the Brazil Current, and marine productivity

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Abstract

Collective assessment of marine and terrigenous organic biomarkers was performed on a sediment core spanning the last 34,800 years on the upper slope southeast of Brazil to verify the signatures of climatic variations in sea surface temperature (SST), marine productivity, and the flux of terrigenous material in this region. This evaluation is based on marine and terrigenous proxies including alkenones, chlorins, aliphatic hydrocarbons, n-alcohols, and fatty acids. This first report of organic biomarker data for this region confirms a correlation between SST, changes in terrigenous organic matter flow into the ocean, and marine productivity over the last 34.8 ka as a response to the displacement of the Brazil Current. Conditions prevailing during marine isotopic stage (MIS) 3 may be considered intermediate between the last glacial maximum (LGM) and the Late Holocene. For MIS 2, a period of low relative sea level, it was verified that the lowest SSTs were associated with the LGM and higher marine productivity. SST increased by up to 4.4 °C between the LGM and the Holocene. This reveals synchronicity between SST on the southeastern Brazilian upper slope and the North Atlantic Ocean SST records reported in earlier studies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the crew of the RV Prof. W. Besnard and the researchers who joined the “Buzios project” cruise in September 2003, as well as the researchers Nuria Moraleda, Marina Pascual and Natalia Nuñes from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Financial support was provided by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) through grant 01/13490-9. Also acknowledged are constructive comments by three anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Oceanográfico da Universidade de São Paulo (IOUSP), Praça do Oceanográfico, 191, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

    Rafael André Lourenço, Michel Michaelovitch de Mahiques, Ilana Elazari Klein Coaracy Wainer & Márcia Caruso Bícego

  2. Institut de Ciència I Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Antoni Rosell-Melé

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  1. Rafael André Lourenço
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  2. Michel Michaelovitch de Mahiques
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Correspondence to Rafael André Lourenço.

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Lourenço, R.A., de Mahiques, M.M., Wainer, I.E.K.C. et al. Organic biomarker records spanning the last 34,800 years from the southeastern Brazilian upper slope: links between sea surface temperature, displacement of the Brazil Current, and marine productivity. Geo-Mar Lett 36, 361–369 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-016-0453-7

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