Investigating water depth influence on organic paleotemperature proxies from sedimentary archives

Summary The TEX₈₆ has been widely used as a paleothermometer to reconstruct past water temperatures. A recent study had suggested a re-calibration of TEX₈₆ to deep sub-surface ocean temperatures, far deeper than previously assumed for TEX₈₆ signals. Such a calibration would imply a potential influence of water depth on TEX₈₆ values from sites with widely varying water depths. Here we investigate the potential impact of water depth on organic temperature proxies by analyzing sedimentary signals (TEX₈₆ and UK’₃₇) from two geographically proximal sites, but from different water depths, encompassing several glacial-interglacial cycles in the Late Quaternary. We observe that TEX₈₆ temperature records from nearby shallow and deep site show no significant difference and yield similar temperature estimates as the UK’₃₇.