The source of throughflow water further north due to the closure of Indonesian seaway and the resulting fall in SSTs in the eastern
Indian Ocean would be responsible for reducing rainfall in eastern Africa. The increased gradient of sea surface temperature along with possible mountain building in New Guinea reduced the transport of heat from the tropics (the end of the Pliocene ‘permanent El Niño’) up to such a level as to cause global climatic cooling and the growth of ice sheets (Cane & Molnar 2001). These authors explained that changes in the Pacific Ocean dynamics resulting from the progressive closure of the Indonesian seaway triggered the transition from a permanent El Niño to the more La Niña-like climate of modern times. The new source
of Pacific waters into the Indian Ocean, having changed from the southern warm thermocline Erastin mw to northern cold waters as a result of the northward drift Talazoparib of New Guinea across the equator (Rodgers et al. 2000), could have decreased SSTs in upwelling regions, which may in turn have caused a significant cooling of northern America through teleconnections and hence the initiations of the late Pliocene Northern Hemisphere glaciations. Earlier, Dickens & Owen (1994) inferred that the restriction of the warm and oligotrophic Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean increased biological productivity, which was ultimately responsible for the expansion of the Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) in the central Indian Ocean. They also suggested that before this closure warm water from the south Pacific was entering the Indian Ocean, increasing sea surface temperature and producing a rainier climate in eastern Africa. The relative abundance of U. proboscidea and the percentage of total infaunal taxa increased considerably with much greater fluctuations during the Pleistocene. These faunal changes reflect prominent oscillations in the upwelling-led surface water productivity during the Pleistocene, possibly in response to the episodic nature of the changing strength
of the Leeuwin Current. The strength of the Leeuwin Current is largely dependent upon the behaviour of WPWP and Indonesian Throughflow waters ( Godfrey & Weaver 1991) due ID-8 to glacial and interglacial changes. Sinha et al. (2006) suggested that during glacial intervals the flow of the Leeuwin Current was substantially reduced or stopped altogether due to the reduction of WPWP and/or the lowering of the sea level, possibly as a result of intense cooling and ice formation. They also explained that the weakening of the southward-flowing Leeuwin Current resulted in a dominant equatorward wind-driven circulation, leading in turn to offshore Ekman transport and increased upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface that enhanced surface water productivity in the eastern Indian Ocean. B.