Southern Ocean and Antarctic Peninsula Temperatures During Critical Climate Transitions of the Cenozoic Constrained by Clumped Isotope Thermometry

The Southern Ocean and Antarctica play fundamental roles in the global climate system. These polar regions are a major area for the net loss of heat to space. Ice storage on Antarctica also influences the global water cycle. Through upwelling of deep waters, the Southern Ocean is an important regulator of atmospheric CO2. To better constrain the evolution of paleoclimate in this region over major climate transitions of the Cenozoic, we estimated ocean temperatures using clumped isotope thermometry. Clumped isotope thermometry is a thermodynamically-based stable isotope thermometer that can be used to constrain temperatures previously estimated using other paleothermometers (which in turn leads to constraints on ice volume), as it allows the exclusion of water isotope composition from temperature estimates (unlike the δ18O thermometer). We previously have published calibrations for foraminifera and mollusks, two of the major archives used in this study. Critical transitions investigated include the Eocene-Oligocene boundary and the Middle Miocene Climate Transition. Study sites include Seymour Island (Antarctic Peninsula), ANDRILL (Southern McMurdo Sounds), Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Sites 689/690 (Weddell Sea), and ODP 744 (Kerguelen Plateau). Results will be compared to GCM output.