The Younger Dryas (YD, dated between 12.7}11.6 ky BP in the GRIP ice core, Central Greenland) is a distinct cold period in the North Atlantic region during the last deglaciation. A popular, but controversial hypothesis to explain the cooling is a reduction of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC) and associated northward heat #ux as triggered by glacial meltwater. Recently, a CH 4 -based ...

[1] In late boreal spring, especially May, a strong relationship exists in observations among precipitation anomalies over equatorial South America and the Atlantic intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), and eastern equatorial Pacific and central equatorial Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA). A chain of correlations of equatorial Pacific SSTA, western equatorial Atlantic wind str...

We present a benthic foraminiferal multiproxy record of eastern equatorial Atlantic (EEA) middepth water (1295m) covering the last deglacial. We show that EEA middepth water temperatures were elevated by 3.9 ± 0.5°C and 5.2 ± 1.2°C during Heinrich event 1 (H1) and Younger Dryas (YD), respectively. The radiocarbon content of the EEA middepth during H1 and YD is relatively low and comparable to t...

A global compilation of deep-sea isotopic records suggests that Maastrichtian ocean-climate evolution was tectonically driven. During the early Maastrichtian the Atlantic intermediate-deep ocean was isolated from the Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans; deep water formed in the high-latitude North Atlantic and North Pacific. At the early/late Maastrichtian boundary a major reorganization of oc...

CHAMP satellite and relatively densely spaced ground-based data measured over southern Africa between 2005 and 2010 are combined in a new regional, harmonic spline based, core field model. This new SACFM-2 model is compared to the regional SARM model, which is based only on satellite data, and the global CHAOS-6 model. The results agree well in the vertical (Z) component, with somewhat larger d...

The taxonomic status of a disjunctive population of Phyllomedusa from southern Brazil was diagnosed using molecular, chromosomal, and morphological approaches, which resulted in the recognition of a new species of the P. hypochondrialis group. Here, we describe P. rustica sp. n. from the Atlantic Forest biome, found in natural highland grassland formations on a plateau in the south of Brazil. P...

The Atlantic humpback dolphin is a small delphinid regionally endemic to the tropical and subtropical eastern Atlantic nearshore waters of West Africa (Culik, 2002; Jefferson et al.). Its status was recently and comprehensively reviewed as part of the CMS/UNEP Wafcet-2 project (Van Waerebeek et al., 2003, 2004). S. teuszii was described in 1892 from a carcass found in Cameroon. Second and third...

[1] Based on the nonlinear techniques for estimation of coupling between oscillatory systems, we investigate the dynamics of climatic modes characterizing global and the Northern Hemisphere (NH) processes. In particular, indices of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) for 1950–2004 are analyzed. The methods based on phase dynamics modeling and nonlinear ‘...

[1] Two distinct roles of the Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs), namely, the North Tropical Atlantic (NTA) SST and the Atlantic Niño, on the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability are investigated using the observational data from 1980 to 2010 and coupled model experiments. It appears that the NTA SST and the Atlantic Niño can be used as two independent predictors for predicting...

Climate variations influence North Atlantic winter storm intensity and resultant variations in wave energy levels. A 60 year hindcast allows investigation of the influence of decadal climate variability on long-term trends of North Atlantic wave power, PW, spanning the 1948–2008 epoch. PW variations over much of the eastern North Atlantic are strongly influenced by the fluctuating North Atlanti...