Abstract. Here we present organic export production and isotopic nitrogen results over the last 30 000 years from one core localized off Costa Rica (ODP Site 1242) on the leading edge of the oxygen minimum zone of the Eastern Tropical North Pacific. Marine export production reveals glacial-interglacial variations with low organic matter (total organic carbon and total nitrogen) contents during warm intervals, twice more during cold episodes and double peaked maximum during the deglaciation, between ~15.5–18.5 and 11–13 ka BP. When this new export production record is compared with four nearby cores localized within the Eastern Pacific along the Equatorial divergence, a good agreement between all the cores is observed, with the major feature being a maximum of export during the early deglaciation. As for export production, water-column denitrification represented by sedimentary δ15N records along the Eastern tropical North and South Pacific between 15° N and 36° S is coherent as well over the last deglaciation period. The whole isotopic nitrogen profiles indicate that denitrification increased abruptly at 19 ka BP to a maximum during the early deglaciation, confirming a typical Antarctic timing. It is proposed that the increase in export production and then in subsurface oxygen demand lead to an intensification of water-column denitrification within the oxygen minimum zones in the easternmost Pacific at the time of the last deglaciation. The triggering mechanism would have been primarily linked to an increase in preformed nutrients contents feeding the Equatorial Undercurrent driven by the resumption of overturning in the Southern Ocean and the return of nutrients from the deep ocean to the sea-surface. An increase in equatorial wind-driven upwelling of sub-surface nutrient-rich waters could have played the role of an amplifier.
Links between eastern equatorial Pacific stratification and atmospheric CO
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rise during the last deglaciation
