Reduced North Atlantic Deep Water flux to the glacial Southern Ocean inferred from neodymium isotope ratios.

The global circulation of the oceans and the atmosphere transports heat around the Earth. Broecker and Denton suggested that changes in the global ocean circulation might have triggered or enhanced the glacial-interglacial cycles. But proxy data for past circulation taken from sediment cores in the South Atlantic Ocean have yielded conflicting interpretations of ocean circulation in glacial times--delta13C variations in benthic foraminifera support the idea of a glacial weakening or shutdown of North Atlantic Deep Water production, whereas other proxies, such as Cd/Ca, Ba/Ca and 231Pa/230Th ratios, show little change from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene epoch.