Southwest Pacific Climate Reconstructions from the Last Termination

125 calibrated radiocarbon ages support climatic reconstructions from five sites spanning a transect from southern New Zealand to Indonesia. Two significant climate shifts at approximately 17 and 14.2 thousand years before present are likely linked to West Pacific Warm Pool warming and Antarctic ice collapse. The dataset provides a rare, detailed palaeoclimatic record for a key region in the Southern Hemisphere during the period 20-10 kyr BP.

Use Cases

• Testing hypotheses about climate teleconnections between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres based on multi-site reconstructions.
• Investigating the timing and impact of Meltwater Pulse-1A on regional climate using the identified 14.2 kyr BP event.
• Calibrating or validating global climate models for the Last Termination period using the southwestern Pacific transect data.
• Studying the onset of warming in the West Pacific Warm Pool using the climatic shift identified at around 17 kyr BP.

Strengths

• Contains data from five distinct sites along a transect, providing spatial coverage across the southwestern Pacific.
• Supported by 125 calibrated radiocarbon ages, offering a chronological framework for the reconstructions.
• Covers a specific and climatically important period (20-10 thousand years before present) during the Last Termination.

Limitations

• Lacks quantified climatic parameters, making precise interpretation of the climate variations difficult.
• Severe geochronological constraints are noted as a key limitation of the radiocarbon-based age models.
• Specific data columns, row counts, file formats (beyond HTML), and licensing information are not provided in the available metadata.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Climatic reconstructions derived from palaeoclimatic records, supported by radiocarbon dating.

Time Range

20-10 thousand years before present (kyr BP)

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-27 21:33:24.381418

Geography

Southwestern Pacific transect from southern New Zealand, through Australia, to Indonesia.