Responses of the Okhotsk Sea environment and sedimentology to global climate changes at the orbital and millennial scale during the last 350 kyr

We measured productivity proxies (chlorin, carbonate and organic carbon, opal, and biogenic Ba content) and lithophysical proxies (magnetic susceptibility, water content, density, and coarse sediment fraction) in sediment of central Okhotsk Sea core PC-7R. The age model covering the last 350 kyr of this core was constructed by correlating the dated series of relative paleointensity lows recognized in geomagnetic intensity records, marine isotope stage (MIS) boundaries determined in broad variations of the lithophysical and productivity proxies, and tephrochronology. The orbital changes of the lithophysical and productivity proxy stacks lag behind Northern Hemisphere summer radiation by approximately 6.3 and 5.9 kyr, respectively. This lag is consistent with a Milankovich model of climate control by solar radiation through the northern ice sheet volume and sea surface and surrounding land responses, which are fast compared with sedimentological evidence. Productivity proxies of the Okhotsk Sea also demonstrate 52 abrupt, pronounced productivity minima associated with regional climate coolings during the last 350 kyr, which present useful indicators of millennial-scale climate changes in this marginal sea. Based on the postulated synchronicity of Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles in the Northern Hemisphere and the established simultaneity of 11 Okhotsk Sea coolings in the last 77 kyr with abrupt severe cold events in the Greenland ice core and North Atlantic Heinrich events, all of these may be regarded as Heinrich-equivalent event anomalies. The Okhotsk Sea events have their counterparts in the records of North Atlantic sediments, the Greenland ice sheet, East Asia summer monsoon, and the Antarctic ice sheet. Probably the Arctic Oscillation was the main factor determining orbital and millennial climate oscillations in the high-latitude Northern Hemisphere, including the Okhotsk Sea region. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.