Deep Water Circulation Early modeling studies by Peter Wyle and
Clause Rooth in the 1960.s indicated that small perturbations in
the fresh water balance in the high North Atlantic could
modulate the production of North Atlantic Deep Water and
possibly effect global climate. The pioneering carbon isotope
studies on benthic foraminifera by Jean-Claude Duplessy and Nick
Shackleton during the 1970.s hinted that North Atlantic Deep
Water production rates varied dramatically during glacial-
interglacial cycles. These results fueled a gold rush of
speculations that NADW may be the mystery climate amplifier of
the Milankovitch cycles. This sparked thirty years of NADW
studies using an evolving arsenal of deep ocean circulation
proxies. The picture is still confusing today but slowly there
appears to be some concordance between the newer proxies
although there remain stark differences in the details. We have
worked on this problem for most of its evolution with five major
foci. First we concentrated on statistically li