Surface sediment characteristics in the Drake Passage sector of the Southern Ocean

Understanding present-day sediment provenance and transport processes is crucial for studies about the dynamics of ocean circulation, as well as for paleoclimate reconstructions in the Drake Passage (DP), a key area for Earth's global oceanic circulation and climate during past and future. Based on a comprehensive set of surface sediment samples, we used spatial variations in grain-size distribution, bulk sediment mineralogy, silt and clay mineralogy across the entire DP region to elucidate the terrigenous sources and transport mechanisms. The statistical evaluation of these data identifies southern Patagonia (carbonate, illite, chlorite, feldspar and quartz) and the Antarctic Peninsula (chlorite, smectite, and amphibole) as the main sources for terrigenous sediments in the DP region. Different current systems are transporting the sediment material. Here, we provide a new, robust flow speed calibration for silt grain-sizes to enable the reconstruction of Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) dynamics in the DP sector of the Southern Ocean. We correlated the sortable silt mean grain-size records of surface sediments with adjacent long-term current meter data. A clear bottom current speed pattern shows the variability of the ACC in the DP responding to the dynamics of ocean fronts, in agreement with modern observation.