Abstract. Marine sediments have greatly improved our understanding of the climate system, but their interpretation often assumes that certain climate mechanisms operate consistently over all timescales of interest and that variability at one or a few sample sites is representative of an oceanographic province. In this study, we test these assumptions using modern observations in an idealized manner mimicking paleo-reconstruction to investigate whether sea surface temperature and productivity proxy records in the Southern California Current System can be used to reconstruct Ekman upwelling. The method uses extended empirical orthogonal function (EEOF) analysis of the covariation of alongshore wind stress, chlorophyll, and sea surface temperature as measured by satellites from 2002 to 2009. We find that EEOF1 does not reflect an Ekman upwelling pattern but instead much broader California Current processes. EEOF2 and 3 reflect upwelling patterns, but these patterns are timescale dependent and regional. Thus, the skill of using one site to reconstruct the large-scale dominant patterns is spatially dependent. Lastly, we show that using multiple sites and/or multiple variables generally improves field reconstruction. These results together suggest that caution is needed when attempting to extrapolate mechanisms that may be important on seasonal timescales (e.g., Ekman upwelling) to deeper time but also the advantage of having multiple proxy records.
Glacial-Interglacial Sea-Surface Temperature Record Inferred from Alkenone Unsaturation indices, Site 893, Santa Barbara Basin