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Age Constraints on Gulf of Mexico Deep Water Ventilation as Determined by 14C Measurements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2017

Piers Chapman ,
Steven F DiMarco ,
Robert M Key ,
Connie Previti  and
Shari Yvon-Lewis
Piers Chapman*
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3146, USA
Steven F DiMarco
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3146, USA
Robert M Key
Affiliation:
Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Connie Previti
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3146, USA
Shari Yvon-Lewis
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3146, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: piers.chapman@tamu.edu.
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Abstract

While the exchange of water through Yucatan Strait is reasonably well known, the age of the deep water in both the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico is not. We recently measured the radiocarbon (14C) concentrations in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico from a line of stations along 90°30′W. The mean apparent age of water below 900 m, the depth of the Florida Strait sill, was found to be about 740 yr relative to the 1950 14C standard. Depending on how the corrections for biological activity in the upper water are applied, this converts to a “true” age of between 231 ± 28 and 293 ± 74 yr. These ages agree with a previous estimate of the age of the deep water in the Gulf of Mexico based on heat flows, put upper limits on the age of the deep water in the Caribbean Sea, and provide constraints on modelers for the return of deep water from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean. This might be important in the event of a future deep water oil or other chemical spill in the region.

Keywords

Gulf of Mexicoradiocarbon AMS datingwater
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 75 - 90
Copyright
© 2017 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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