Late Cretaceous–Neogene trends in deep ocean temperature and continental ice volume: Reconciling records of benthic foraminiferal geochemistry (<i>δ</i>¹⁸O and Mg/Ca) with sea level history

[1] We reconstruct trends in ice volume and deep ocean temperature for the past 108 Myr, resolving variations on timescales of ∼2 Myr and longer. We use a sea level record as a proxy for ice volume, a benthic foraminiferal Mg/Cabf record as a proxy for temperature, and a benthic foraminiferal δ18Obf record as a proxy for both. This allows us to construct dual estimates of temperature and ice volume variations for the interval 10–60 Ma: extracting temperature from δ18Obf by using sea level as a proxy for ice volume to constrain the δ18Osw component, and extracting seawater δ18Osw (which reflects ice volume) from δ18Obf by using Mg/Cabf to constrain the temperature component. Each of these approaches requires numerous assumptions, but the range of plausible solutions are concordant on timescales >2 Myr and within an uncertainty of ±2°C temperature and ±0.4‰ δ18Osw. The agreement between the two approaches for the last 50 Myr provides empirical justification for the use of δ18Obf, Mg/Cabf, and sea level records as robust climate proxies. Our reconstructions indicate differences between deep ocean cooling and continental ice growth in the late Cenozoic: cooling occurred gradually in the middle–late Eocene and late Miocene–Pliocene while ice growth occurred rapidly in the earliest Oligocene, middle Miocene, and Plio-Pleistocene. These differences are consistent with climate models that imply that temperatures, set by the long-term CO2 equilibrium, should change only gradually on timescales >2 Myr, but growth of continental ice sheets may be rapid in response to climate thresholds due to feedbacks that are not yet fully understood.