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Our understanding of the long-term evolution of the Earth system is based on the assumption that terrestrial weathering rates should respond to, and hence help regulate, atmospheric CO2 and climate. Increased terrestrial weathering requires increased carbonate accumulation in marine sediments, which in turn is expected to result in a long-term deepening of the carbonate compensation depth (CCD). Here, we critically assess this long-term relationship between climate and carbon cycling. We generate a record of marine deep-sea carbonate abundance from selected late Paleocene through early Eocene time slices to reconstruct the position of the CCD. Although our data set allows for a modest CCD deepening, we find no statistically significant change in the CCD despite >3 °C global warming, highlighting the need for additional deep-sea constraints on carbonate accumulation. Using an Earth system model, we show that the impact of warming and increased weathering on the CCD can be obscured by the opposing influences of ocean circulation patterns and sedimentary respiration of organic matter. From our data synthesis and modeling, we suggest that observations of warming, declining δ13C and a relatively stable CCD can be broadly reproduced by mid-Paleogene increases in volcanic CO2 outgassing and weathering. However, remaining data-model discrepancies hint at missing processes in our model, most likely involving the preservation and burial of organic carbon. Our finding of a decoupling between the CCD and global marine carbonate burial rates means that considerable care is needed in attempting to use the CCD to directly gauge global carbonate burial rates and hence weathering rates.

Reconstructions of ocean oxygenation are critical for understanding the role of respired carbon storage in regulating atmospheric CO 2 . Independent sediment redox proxies are essential to assess such reconstructions. Here, we present a long magnetofossil record from the eastern Indian Ocean in which we observe coeval magnetic hardening and enrichment of larger, more elongated, and less oxidized magnetofossils during glacials compared to interglacials over the last ~900 ka. Our multi-proxy records of redox-sensitive magnetofossils, trace element concentrations, and benthic foraminiferal Δδ 13 C consistently suggest a recurrence of lower O 2 in the glacial Indian Ocean over the last 21 marine isotope stages, as has been reported for the Atlantic and Pacific across the last glaciation. Consistent multi-proxy documentation of this repeated oxygen decline strongly supports the hypothesis that increased Indian Ocean glacial carbon storage played a significant role in atmospheric CO 2 cycling and climate change over recent glacial/interglacial timescales., (© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

The carbon cycle is a key regulator of Earth's climate. On geological time-scales, our understanding of particulate organic matter (POM), an important upper ocean carbon pool that fuels ecosystems and an integrated part of the carbon cycle, is limited. Here we investigate the relationship of planktonic foraminifera-bound organic carbon isotopes (δ 13 C org-pforam ) with δ 13 C org of POM (δ 13 C org-POM ). We compare δ 13 C org-pforam of several planktonic foraminifera species from plankton nets and recent sediment cores with δ 13 C org-POM on a N-S Atlantic Ocean transect. Our results indicate that δ 13 C org-pforam of planktonic foraminifera are remarkably similar to δ 13 C org-POM . Application of our method on a glacial sample furthermore provided a δ 13 C org-pforam value similar to glacial δ 13 C org-POM predictions. We thus show that δ 13 C org-pforam is a promising proxy to reconstruct environmental conditions in the upper ocean, providing a route to isolate past variations in δ 13 C org-POM and better understanding of the evolution of the carbon cycle over geological time-scales., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Increased storage of carbon in the oceans has been proposed as a mechanism to explain lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide during ice ages; however, unequivocal signatures of this storage have not been found 1 . In seawater, the dissolved gases oxygen and carbon dioxide are linked via the production and decay of organic material, with reconstructions of low oxygen concentrations in the past indicating an increase in biologically mediated carbon storage. Marine sediment proxy records have suggested that oxygen concentrations in the deep ocean were indeed lower during the last ice age, but that near-surface and intermediate waters of the Pacific Ocean-a large fraction of which are poorly oxygenated at present-were generally better oxygenated during the glacial 1-3 . This vertical opposition could suggest a minimal net basin-integrated change in carbon storage. Here we apply a dual-proxy approach, incorporating qualitative upper-water-column and quantitative bottom-water oxygen reconstructions 4,5 , to constrain changes in the vertical extent of low-oxygen waters in the eastern tropical Pacific since the last ice age. Our tandem proxy reconstructions provide evidence of a downward expansion of oxygen depletion in the eastern Pacific during the last glacial, with no indication of greater oxygenation in the upper reaches of the water column. We extrapolate our quantitative deep-water oxygen reconstructions to show that the respired carbon reservoir of the glacial Pacific was substantially increased, establishing it as an important component of the coupled mechanism that led to low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the glacial.