MARGO: MULTIPROXY APPROACH FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE GLACIAL OCEAN SURFACE

Four years after the EPILOG (Environmental Processes of an Ice Age: Land, Ocean and Glaciers) project was launched as an IMAGES/PAGES initiative, MARGO has initiated the compilation of core-top, Late Holocene, and LGM data sets for geochemical and microfossil-based sea-surface temperature (SST) proxies with global coverage. The MARGO project, an international assembly of paleoceanographers and paleoclimatologists contributing with own data or expertise (www.pangaea.de/projects/MARGO), has formulated recommendations and action plans that should stimulate the compilation of large data sets for global-scale proxy calibration as well as for Late Holocene and LGM SST reconstructions and the organisation of corresponding archives in one concerted effort. The data sets considered are diatom, radiolaria, foraminifera and dinoflagellate counts, alkenone unsaturation ratios, and Mg/Ca records of foraminifera that are available to date. It is furthermore intended to compare SST estimates with a global data set of oxygen isotope values from planktonic foraminifera. The MARGO aims are twofold: The first is to define the general items for the content and structure of a global synthesis that are valid for all the different proxies. The second addresses issues particularly related to each of the proxy methods, and to the choice of different mapping methods as well as to the use of ocean temperature atlas data for calibration with core-top SST estimates. In parallel MARGO started to build up a new data archive in the PANGAEA-WDC MARE data bank. The archive now contains about 20 individual data sets that range from individual core data to basin-wide compilations for the LGM time slice. Also core-top data sets for regional or global calibration of different proxies will be archived. This presentation will report on the status of the MARGO archive and provide general information and guidelines for data submission and/or retrieval in the future.