Atmospheric weather systems become unpredictable beyond a few weeks, but climate variations can be predictable over much longer periods because of the coupling of the ocean and atmosphere. With the use of a global coupled ocean-atmosphere model, it is shown that the North Atlantic may have climatic predictability on the order of a decade or longer. These results suggest that variations of the d...

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...

As a major CO2 sink, the North Atlantic, especially its subpolar gyre region, is essential for the global carbon cycle. Decadal fluctuations of CO2 uptake in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre region are associated with the evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, ocean mixing and sea surface temperature anomalies. While variations in the physi...

The intricate geological evolution of the Arctic Ocean is paralleled by complexities in the biogeographical and phylogenetical histories of the Arctic biota, including bryozoans. Here we present revised taxonomic descriptions for all known species of the bryozoan genus Pseudoflustra, and use the present-day distributions and phylogenetic relationships between these species to infer the historic...

In an attempt to elucidate the role of atmospheric and oceanic processes in setting a vigorous ocean overturning circulation in the North Atlantic but not in the North Pacific, a comparison of the observed atmospheric circulation and net surface freshwater fluxes over the North Atlantic and Pacific basins is conducted. It is proposed that the more erratic meridional displacements of the atmosph...

Owing to the lack of absolutely dated oceanographic information before the modern instrumental period, there is currently significant debate as to the role played by North Atlantic Ocean dynamics in previous climate transitions (for example, Medieval Climate Anomaly-Little Ice Age, MCA-LIA). Here we present analyses of a millennial-length, annually resolved and absolutely dated marine δ18O arch...

The influence of the overturning circulation on the anthropogenic carbon sink in the North Atlantic is investigated with a simple box model. The net air-sea flux of anthropogenic carbon is the result of two opposing fluxes: one is uptake caused by the disequilibrium between the rapidly rising atmospheric pCO2 and the dissolved carbon content in the ocean, depending mainly on the water exchange ...

1 Variations in power input to the ocean using a recent global “reanalysis” extending back 2 to 1871 shows a strong trend in the net power input since then, a trend dominated by 3 the Southern Ocean region. This trend is interpreted as a spurious result of the changing 4 observational system. Focussing therefore, on the North Atlantic, where the data base is 5 somewhat more secure, the input po...

This study has used TOMS AI as well as the reanalysis dataset of thirty-four years (1979-2012) to investigate the influence of atmospheric circulation on dust transport during the Harmattan period in West Africa, using Aerosol Index (AI) data, obtained from various satellite sensors. Changes in Inter-Tropical Discontinuity (ITD), Sea Surface Temperature (SST) over the Gulf of Guinea, and North ...

In the present study we have investigated the population genetic structure of albacore (Thunnus alalunga, Bonnaterre 1788) and assessed the loss of genetic diversity, likely due to overfishing, of albacore population in the North Atlantic Ocean. For this purpose, 1,331 individuals from 26 worldwide locations were analyzed by genotyping 75 novel nuclear SNPs. Our results indicated the existence ...