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Climatic significance of Holocene beachrock sites along shorelines of the Red Sea

¹ Northeastern Science Foundation, Inc., Rensselaer Center of Applied Geology, 15 Third Street, P.O. Box 746, Troy, New York 12181; gmfriedman{at}juno.com

Friedman began his career as a geochemist in the Appalachians and Canadian Shield. He switched to soft-rock geology and became director of sedimentology for Amoco Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since returning to academia, he has worked with his graduate students on carbonate deposits, regional stratigraphy, and environmental geology. He has studied modern facies in the Bahamas, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, and the Mediterranean.

Seaward-dipping prograding successions of beachrock of the shoreline of the rift valley of the Gulf of Aqaba, a steep-sided tectonic valley that forms the northern segment of the Red Sea, reflect progressive stages of cementation, which unravel a geologic history of the shoreline. The oxygen isotopic composition of Gulf of Aqaba beachrock, recorded by carbonate cement, reflects a temperature decrease of ambient seawater for approximately half of the Holocene.

The computed temperature excursion of the Red Sea beachrock cement implies a temperature decrease between the ages 7.07 ± 0.380 and 2.62 ± 0.23 ka, an interval of approximately 4500 yr, during which the average Red Sea seawater temperature fell from 33 to 17°C. This discovery is at variance with the climate-change debate that involves increasing temperatures.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				P. S. Mozley and S. J. Burns Climatic significance of Holocene beachrock sites along shorelines of the Red Sea: Discussion AAPG Bulletin, June 1, 2006; 90(6): 971 - 973. [Full Text] [PDF]

				G. M. Friedman Climatic significance of Holocene beachrock sites along shorelines of the Red Sea: Reply AAPG Bulletin, June 1, 2006; 90(6): 975 - 982. [Full Text] [PDF]