“…Although the Arctic Front that divides Atlantic and Arctic waters presently lies to the north of Site 983, it is known to have migrated southward during glacials of the Pleistocene bringing much cooler waters and potentially also sea ice to the site [e.g., Bard et al, 1987;Rosell-Melé et al, 1998;Wright and Flower, 2002]. In contrast, sea ice does not appear to have reached Site 882 over the Pliocene and Pleistocene; rather, glacials are associated with increasing polar stratification [Haug et al, 2005[Haug et al, , 1999Jaccard et al, 2005]. We monitor the extent of cool and fresh arctic and polar waters using the concentration of the tetra-unsaturated alkenone, C 37:4 [Bendle and Rosell-Melé, 2004;Bendle et al, 2005;Rosell-Melé, 1998;Rosell-Melé et al, 1994].…”