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The Fram Strait is the only deep gateway between the Arctic Ocean and the Nordic Seas and thus is a key area to study past changes in ocean circulation and the marine carbon cycle. Here, we study deep ocean temperature, δ18O, carbonate chemistry (i.e., carbonate ion concentration [CO32−]), and nutrient content in the Fram Strait during the late glacial (35,000–19,000 years BP) and the Holocene based on benthic foraminiferal geochemistry and carbon cycle modeling. Our results indicate a thickening of Atlantic water penetrating into the northern Nordic Seas, forming a subsurface Atlantic intermediate water layer reaching to at least ∼2,600 m water depth during most of the late glacial period. The recirculating Atlantic layer was characterized by relatively high [CO32−] and low δ13C during the late glacial, and provides evidence for a Nordic Seas source to the glacial North Atlantic intermediate water flowing at 2,000–3,000 m water depth, most likely via the Denmark Strait. In addition, we discuss evidence for enhanced terrestrial carbon input to the Nordic Seas at ∼23.5 ka. Comparing our δ13C and qualitative [CO32−] records with results of carbon cycle box modeling suggests that the total terrestrial CO2 release during this carbon input event was low, slow, or directly to the atmosphere.

The record of past climate highlights recurrent and intense millennial anomalies, characterised by a distinct pattern of inter-polar temperature change, termed the ‘thermal bipolar seesaw’, which is widely believed to arise from rapid changes in the Atlantic overturning circulation. By forcing a suppression of North Atlantic convection, models have been able to reproduce many of the general features of the thermal bipolar seesaw; however, they typically fail to capture the full magnitude of temperature change reconstructed using polar ice cores from both hemispheres. Here we use deep-water temperature reconstructions, combined with parallel oxygenation and radiocarbon ventilation records, to demonstrate the occurrence of enhanced deep convection in the Southern Ocean across the particularly intense millennial climate anomaly, Heinrich Stadial 4. Our results underline the important role of Southern Ocean convection as a potential amplifier of Antarctic warming, and atmospheric CO2 rise, that is responsive to triggers originating in the North Atlantic.

Planktonic foraminiferal biomineralization intensity, reflected by the weight of their shell calcite mass, affects global carbonate deposition and is known to follow climatic cycles by being increased during glacial stages and decreased during interglacial stages. Here, we measure the dissolution state and the mass of the shells of the planktonic foraminifera species Globigerina bulloides from a Tropical Eastern North Atlantic site over the last two glacial-interglacial climatic transitions, and we report no major changes in plankton calcite production with the atmospheric pCO2 variations. We attribute this consistency in foraminifera calcification to the climatic and hydrological stability of the tropical regions. However, we recorded increased shell masses midway through the penultimate deglaciation (Termination II). In order to elucidate the cause of the increased shell weights, we performed δ18O, Mg/Ca, and μCT measurements on the same shells from a number of samples surrounding this event. Compared with the lighter ones, we find that the foraminifera of increased weight are internally contaminated by sediment infilling and that their shell masses respond to local surface seawater density changes. © 2020 by the authors.

Single-cell genetics were used to interrogate clonal complexity and the sequence of mutational events in STIL-TAL1+ T-ALL. Single-cell multicolour FISH was used to demonstrate that the earliest detectable leukaemia subclone contained the STIL-TAL1 fusion and copy number loss of 9p21.3 (CDKN2A/CDKN2B locus), with other copy number alterations including loss of PTEN occurring as secondary subclonal events. In three cases, multiplex qPCR and phylogenetic analysis were used to produce branching evolutionary trees recapitulating the snapshot history of T-ALL evolution in this leukaemia subtype, which confirmed that mutations in key T-ALL drivers, including NOTCH1 and PTEN, were subclonal and reiterative in distinct subclones. Xenografting confirmed that self-renewing or propagating cells were genetically diverse. These data suggest that the STIL-TAL1 fusion is a likely founder or truncal event. Therapies targeting the TAL1 auto-regulatory complex are worthy of further investigation in T-ALL.