Control of Seasonality and Interannual to Centennial Climate Variability in the Caribbean During the Holocene—Combining Coral Records, Stalagmite Records and Climate Models - Integrated Analysis of Interglacial Climate Dynamics (INTERDYNAMIC) - page 69

Fig. 2 Simulated annual precipitation (mm/day; shaded) and SST seasonality ( ° C; contour) for
the mid-Holocene shown as anomalies relative to the pre-industrial level. Simulations were
performed with the Earth system model COSMOS (Wei et al. 2012 ; Wei and Lohmann 2013 ). For
reference, the stalagmite site at Cuba in the northern Caribbean Sea (red square) and the coral site
at Bonaire in the southern Caribbean Sea (red dot) are shown

(Fensterer et al. 2012 ). The same relationship is evident on millennial timescales,
where North Atlantic cold events coincide with reduced precipitation in Cuba,
suggesting a role for the AMOC in controlling northern Caribbean precipitation on
these timescales throughout the Holocene (Fensterer et al. 2013 ).
The COSMOS model simulations, along with southern Caribbean coral-based
SST and SSS reconstructions (Giry et al. 2012 , 2013 ) and northern Caribbean
stalagmite-based precipitation reconstructions (Fensterer et al. 2012 , 2013 ) indicate
that the dominating internal variability in the Caribbean during the Holocene can be
linked to ENSO on seasonal and interannual timescales, and to the AMO on
multidecadal and longer timescales, with both showing a quasi-persistent feature
during the Holocene (Wei and Lohmann 2013 ). The AMO, however, can be also
modulated by background conditions associated with the AMOC. For instance, the
large-scale cooling due to the melting

flux from the Laurentide ice sheet triggered
more vigorous AMOC variations during the early Holocene, and in turn generated a
stronger SST signal in the North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea during the AMO warm
and cold phase (Wei and Lohmann 2012 ).