Abstract

We present a reconstruction of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability spanning the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, A.D. 800–1300) and the Little Ice Age (LIA, A.D. 1500–1850). Changes in ENSO are estimated by comparing the spread and symmetry of δ18O values of individual specimens of the thermocline‐dwelling planktonic foraminifer Pulleniatina obliquiloculata extracted from discrete time horizons of a sediment core collected in the Sulawesi Sea, at the edge of the western tropical Pacific warm pool. The spread of individual δ18O values is interpreted to be a measure of the strength of both phases of ENSO while the symmetry of the δ18O distributions is used to evaluate the relative strength/frequency of El Niño and La Niña events. In contrast to previous studies, we use robust and resistant statistics to quantify the spread and symmetry of the δ18O distributions; an approach motivated by the …

Metadata

publication

Paleoceanography 26 (3), 2011

year

2011

publication date

2011/9

authors

D Khider, LD Stott, J Emile‐Geay, R Thunell, DE Hammond

link

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2011PA002139

resource_link

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2011PA002139

journal

Paleoceanography

volume

26

issue

3