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The 1500-year climate oscillation in the midlatitude North Pacific during the Holocene

Dai Isono^1,, Masanobu Yamamoto^1,*, Tomohisa Irino¹, Tadamichi Oba¹, Masafumi Murayama², Toshio Nakamura³ and Hodaka Kawahata⁴

¹ Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan
² Center for Advanced Marine Core Research, Kochi University, Nankoku, Kochi 783-8502, Japan
³ Nagoya University Center for Chronological Research, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
⁴ Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 164-8639, Japan

Correspondence: *E-mail: myama{at}ees.hokudai.ac.jp.

Suborbital climate variability during the last glacial period is suggested to have involved a 1500-year pacing cycle, but the expression and spatial distribution of the ~1500-year oscillation during interglacials remains unclear. We generated a multidecade resolution record of alkenone sea surface temperature (SST) in the northwestern Pacific off central Japan during the Holocene. The SST record showed centennial and millennial variability with an amplitude of ~1 °C throughout the entire Holocene. Spectral analysis for SST variation revealed a statistically significant peak with 1470-year periodicity. The SST variation partly correlated with the variations of ice-rafted hematite-stained grain content in North Atlantic sediments. These findings indicate that the mean latitude of the Kuroshio Extension has varied on a 1500-year cycle, and suggest that a climatic link exists between the North Pacific gyre system and the high-latitude North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. The regular pacing at 1500-year intervals seen throughout both the Holocene and the last glacial period suggests that the oscillation was a response to external forcing.