资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Tropical air‐sea interaction is important in global climate change; its behavior over geological history is poorly understood but can be explored by examining reconstructed sea surface temperature (SST) and thermocline water temperature (TWT). Here, deglacial‐interglacial air‐sea interactions over the past 500 ka were studied by comparing U^K'₃₇ –derived SST_0‐30m and TEX^H₈₆–derived TWT_75m in a sediment core from the southern South China Sea. During deglacials, SST_0‐30m and TWT_75m varied synchronously toward interglacial peaks, while during the peak interglacials, TWT_75m decreased earlier than SST_0‐30m. These changes have been found ubiquitously in tropical oceans during the last two glacial‐interglacial cycles. We propose that the prolonged warm interglacial SST was probably sustained by the natural CO₂ "overshoot" greenhouse effect at the end of most terminations. The early interglacial TWT decrease following local insolation is driven by the decreasing downward heat transport efficiency induced by weakening wind stirring.