North Atlantic climate-ocean variations and sea level in Long Island sound, Connecticut, since 500 cal yr AD

A record of detrended mean high water (MHW) variations from Hammock River m arsh, Connecticut, is extended from ca. 850 to ca. 500 cal yr A.D. and corr elated with summer-temperature reconstructions from northern Fennoscandia a nd northern Eurasia, Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 delta(18)O, and Greenlan d Ice Core Project borehole-temperature variations from central Greenland, a Sargasso Sea sea-surface temperature (SST) record, and a proxy record for deep-ocean flow south of Iceland. The records from northern Fennoscandia/E urasia and central Greenland document century-scale intervals of warming (f our) and cooling (three) since ca A.D. 850. The MHW fluctuations lag behind these climate intervals by 0-100 yr, with the two larger MHW rises corresp onding to the two larger temperature increases. This positive correlation s uggests that surface air temperature (SAT) is a dominant variable controlli ng sea level in the northwestern North Atlantic since ca. A.D. 850. The SST variations parallel the MHW fluctuations back to ca. 950 cal yr A.D. A pos itive correlation is found also for (sub)century-scale SAT and MHW variatio ns during the period A.D. 500-850, but this result is less firm. MHW-SST co rrelation over this time interval is not consistent. (C) 2000 University of Washington.