The Late Quaternary Flow through the Bering Strait Has Been Forced by the Southern Ocean Winds

Abstract

Abstract Because North and South America are surrounded by water, they constitute together a gigantic island whose peripheral sea level is controlled by the winds east of the island, winds along the western boundary of the island, the freshwater flux, and the meridional overturning cell. This idea has been expressed in several articles where a series of analytical models show that the Bering Strait (BS) flow is controlled by the interplay of the Southern Winds (sometimes referred to as the “Subantarctic Westerlies”), and the North Hemisphere freshwater flux. Here, the authors report a paleoceanographic analysis of proxies in the BS as well as the Southern Ocean, which clearly support the above through employment of a slowly varying time-dependent version of the coupled Sandal–Nof model. This study shows a very strong correlation between the Southern Ocean winds and the BS flow. A mid-Holocene weakening of the Southern Winds followed by the cession of freshwater fluxes from the melting Laurentide ice sheet strengthened the BS flow for several thousand years. Increasing the Southern Winds enhances the near surface, cross-equatorial flow from the Southern Ocean to the Northern Hemisphere. This cross-equatorial flow decreases the Arctic outflow into the Atlantic demonstrating a dynamic linkage between the Southern Ocean Winds and the mean flow through the BS.