Sea surface temperatures reconstructed in sediment cores SO202/1_18-3 and SO202/1_18-6

We present TEX86 (Tetraether index of tetraethers consisting of 86 carbon atoms) data from sediment cores SO202/1_18-3 and SO202/1_18-6 in the Bering Sea shelf. TEX86 is a sea surface temperature (SST) proxy based on the distribution of archaeal isoprenoid glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs), and reconstructs SST development during the latest two glacial-interglacial cycles. The branched isoprenoid tetraether (BIT) index (Hopmans et al., 2004) is an indicator of the relative contribution of soil-derived GDGT to marine GDGT. Crucially, a global core top calibration of marine sediments reveals a linear correlation between sedimentary TEX86 and in situ annual mean SST where terrestrial inputs are low (Kim et al., 2008). If BIT values are above the critical value of 0.3 (Weijers et al., 2006), where terrigenous GDGTs potentially bias TEX86-derived SST reconstruction. The regional calibration of SST and TEX86 is based on Seki et al. (2014).TEX86= log (GDGT-2/(GDGT-1+GDGT-2+GDGT-3))SST/℃ = 27.2 × TEX86+ 21.8