Magnetic minerals in Mid-Pleistocene sediments on the Caiwei Guyot,Northwest Pacific and their response to the Mid-Brunhes climate event

Seamounts are ubiquitous topographic units in global oceans, and their influences on local oceanic circulation have attracted great attention in physical oceanography; however, previous efforts were less made in paleoclimatology and paleoceanography. The Caiwei Guyot in the Magellan Seamounts of the western Pacific is a typical seamount, and in this study, we investigate a well-dated sediment core by magnetic properties to reveal the relationship between deep-sea sedimentary processes and global climate changes. The principal results are as follows: (1) the dominant magnetic minerals in the sediments are low-coercivity magnetite in pseudo-single domain range, probably including a biogenic contribution; (2) the variabilities of magnetic parameters can be clustered into two sections at ～500 ka, and the differences between the two units are evident in amplitudes and means; (3) changes in the grainsize-dependent magnetic parameters can be well correlated to records of global ice volume and atmospheric CO2 in the middle Pleistocene. Based on these results, a close linkage was proposed between deep-sea sedimentary processes in the Caiwei Guyot and global climate changes. This linkage likely involves different roles of biogenic magnetite in the sediments between interglacial and glacial intervals, responding to changes in marine productivity and deep-sea circulation and displaying a major change in the Mid-Brunhes climate event. Therefore, we proposed that the sedimentary archives at the bottom of the Caiwei Guyot record some key signals of global climate changes, providing a unique window to observe interactions between various environmental systems on glacial-interglacial timescales.