Sack Lunch Seminar (SLS)

The abyssal ocean during the last glacial period is widely believed to have been
comparatively strongly salt stratified and close to the freezing point of sea water. Much
of the support for that view is based on the work of McDuff, Schrag, Adkins, M. Miller
and several others who analyzed the chlorinity and oxygen isotope ratios from the pore
waters of deep sea cores. The data represent what, in terms of control theory, is termed a
"terminal constraint". That theoretical framework is used to revisit the inferences about
the LGM abyssal properties, and in particular, to understand the degree to which they are
robust to sometimes plausible assumptions about the data.