Distribution of planktic foraminifera in surface sediments of the Atlantic Ocean

DOI

We present a data set of 738 planktonic foraminiferal species counts from sediment surface samples of the eastern North Atlantic and the South Atlantic between 87°N and 40°S, 35°E and 60°W including published Climate: Long-Range Investigation, Mapping, and Prediction (CLIMAP) data. These species counts are linked to Levitus's [1982] modern water temperature data for the four caloric seasons, four depth ranges (0, 30, 50, and 75 m), and the combined means of those depth ranges. The relation between planktonic foraminiferal assemblages and sea surface temperature (SST) data is estimated using the newly developed SIMMAX technique, which is an acronym for a modern analog technique (MAT) with a similarity index, based on (1) the scalar product of the normalized faunal percentages and (2) a weighting procedure of the modern analog's SSTs according to the inverse geographical distances of the most similar samples. Compared to the classical CLIMAP transfer technique and conventional MAT techniques, SIMMAX provides a more confident reconstruction of paleo-SSTs (correlation coefficient is 0.994 for the caloric winter and 0.993 for caloric summer). The standard deviation of the residuals is 0.90°C for caloric winter and 0.96°C for caloric summer at 0-m water depth. The SST estimates reach optimum stability (standard deviation of the residuals is 0.88°C) at the average 0– to 75-m water depth. Our extensive database provides SST estimates over a range of -1.4 to 27.2°C for caloric winter and 0.4 to 28.6°C for caloric summer, allowing SST estimates which are especially valuable for the high-latitude Atlantic during glacial times.

Supplement to: Pflaumann, Uwe; Duprat, Josette M; Pujol, Claude; Labeyrie, Laurent D (1996): SIMMAX: A modern analog technique to deduce Atlantic sea surface temperatures from planktonic foraminifera in deep-sea sediments. Paleoceanography, 11(1), 15-36

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.51621
Related Identifier IsSupplementTo https://doi.org/10.1029/95PA01743
Related Identifier IsDocumentedBy https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.59332
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.51621
Provenance
Creator Pflaumann, Uwe; Duprat, Josette M; Pujol, Claude; Labeyrie, Laurent D
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 1996
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 21402 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-69.500W, -39.820S, 30.850E, 85.390N); Atlantic; South Atlantic Ocean; Walvis Ridge; Angola Basin; Walvis Ridge, Southeast Atlantic Ocean; Guinea Basin; Equatorial Atlantic; Brazil Basin; Cape Basin; Hunter Channel; Eastern Rio Grande Rise; Southwest Guinea Basin; Cardno Seamount; West Angola Basin; Mid Atlantic Ridge; East Brazil Basin; Amazon Fan; Congo Fan; Namibia Continental Margin; Namibia continental slope; Atlantic Ocean; East Atlantic; Northeast Atlantic; off West Africa; off Guinea; eastern Romanche Fracture Zone; Sierra Leone Basin/Guinea Basin; off Liberia; off eastern Ghana; off Nigeria; off Nigeria-Delta; off Gabun; Biscaya; Norwegian Sea; Arctic Ocean; Greenland Sea; Norwegian-Greenland Sea; off Iceland; Cape Blanc/Meteor Bank/Portugal; North Atlantic Ocean; Fram Strait; Iceland Sea; Svalbard; Yermak Plateau; off Portugal
Temporal Coverage Begin 1953-07-30T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 1992-07-21T00:00:00Z