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Abstract

Detailed paleo- and rock magnetic investigations were carried out on two sediment cores from the Tobago Basin, Eastern Caribbean. The 2.8 m long profiles span the last 15 kyr, according to AMS 14C dates. Global climatic variations marking the transition from the Pleistocene into the Holocene are clearly reflected in the rock magnetic parameters. Their variations reflect the contribution of the coarse-grained fraction to the bulk composition. However, fine grained Ti-magnetite particles carry a fairly stable magnetization in sediments deposited in the last 10 kyr. Comparison of stacked directional records of characteristic remanent magnetization (ChRM), inclination and declination, with data obtained from geomagnetic field models revealed distinct similarities for most intervals and add to the knowledge about the variability of the geomagnetic field in this area poorly covered by experimental data. A stacked record of relative paleointensity was also established, using anhysteretic remanent magnetization (ARM) as normalization parameter. Thus, the intensity of the geomagnetic field was steadily decreasing in the Caribbean between 9 and 0 ka, a trend that does not fit to relative paleointensity records available from northern hemisphere stacks but matches other low-latitude records and the South Atlantic paleointensity stack (SAPIS).