A database of paleoceanographic sediment cores from the North Pacific, 1951-2016, link to supplementary material

We assessed sediment coring, data acquisition, and publications from the North Pacific (north of 30°N) from 1951-2016. There are 2134 sediment cores collected by American, French, Japanese, Russian, and international research vessels across the North Pacific (including the Pacific Subarctic Gyre, Alaskan Gyre, Japan Margin, and California Margin, 1391 cores), Sea of Okhotsk (271 cores), Bering Sea (123 cores), and Sea of Japan (349 cores) reported here. All existing metadata associated with these sediment cores are documented, including coring date, location, core number, cruise number, water depth, vessel metadata, and coring technology. North Pacific age models are based on isotope stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, magnetostratigraphy, biostratigraphy, tephrochronology, % opal, color, and lithophysical proxies. Here, we evaluate the iterative generation of each published age model and provide documentation of each dating technique used, as well as sedimentation rates and age ranges. We categorized cores according to availability of a variety of proxy evidence, including biological (e.g. benthic and planktonic foraminifera assemblages), geochemical (e.g. heavy metal concentrations), isotopic (e.g. bulk sediment nitrogen and carbon isotopes), and stratigraphic (e.g. preserved laminations) proxies. This database is a unique resource to the paleoceanographic and paleoclimate communities, and provides cohesive accessibility to sedimentary sequences, age model development, and proxies.