Comparison of the U₃₇ᴷ', LDI, TEX₈₆ᴴ and RI-OH temperature proxies in sediments from the northern shelf of the South China Sea

The applicability of these proxies in the South China Sea (SCS) has been investigated previously. However, in each study only one or two of the proxies were compared, and the recently updated calibrations or new calibrating methods such as BASYPAR and BAYSPLINE were not applied.

Here, we investigate four proxies in parallel in a set of surface sediment samples from the northern SCS shelf and relate them to local sea surface temperature (SST), which allows for us to compare and assess similarities and differences between them and also help improve regional multiproxy seawater temperature reconstructions. Our results indicate that U₃₇ᴷ' reflects annual mean SST with a slight bias toward the warm season.