The transient impact of the African monsoon on Plio-Pleistocene Mediterranean sediments

Over the Plio-Pleistocene interval a strong linkage exists between northern African climate changes and the supply of dust over the surrounding oceans and continental runoff towards the Mediterranean Sea. Both these signatures in the sedimentary record are determined by orbital cycles influencing glacial variability on the one hand and northern African monsoon intensity on the other hand. In this paper, we use the intermediate-complexity model CLIMBER-2 to simulate African climate during the Plio-Pleistocene between 3.2 and 2.3 million years ago (Ma) and compare our simulations with the sedimentary records of marine sediment cores from ODP Site 659 (Atlantic Ocean) and ODP Site 967 (Mediterranean). In this study we will show for the first time an extended Ti-Al record of Site 967 down to 3.2 Ma.