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Collaborative Research:
Holocene/Deglacial Abrupt Climate Change and Variability
of the Western Pacific Warm Pool from Multidecadal
to Century Scale Coral Climate Records
Principal Investigators |
Affiliation |
Funding Source |
Fred Taylor |
UTIG |
NSF award #0402349 |
Dan Sinclair |
UTIG |
NSF award #0402349 |
Jay Banner |
Dept. Geological Sciences, UT Austin |
JSG |
Terrence Quinn |
College of Marine Science, Univ. of South Florida |
NSF award #0401810 |
Lawrence Edwards |
Earth Sciences, Univ. of Minnesota |
NSF award #0402249 |
Abstract
Under this award the PIs will use fossil corals from the western Solomon Islands
and eastern Papua New Guinea to reconstruct high-resolution Holocene/ Deglacial
paleoclimate records. The study area is located near the heart of the Western
Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP), a region that serves as the heat engine of the planetary
climate system and a primary source of water vapor to the atmosphere. Studies of the
instrumental record show that variations in the thermal and hydrologic properties of the
WPWP have global ocean and atmospheric ramifications. This project would generate
monthly resolved, multidecadal to century-scale proxy records of thermal and hydrologic
variability in the WPWP via paired isotopic (?18O) and elemental ratio (Sr/Ca, Mg/Ca,
U/Ca) determinations in fossil corals. These geochemical determinations will be made
after the fossil coral samples have been evaluated for potential diagenetic alteration
using petrography and mineralogy criteria and after they have been precisely dated by
TIMS U-series analysis. The coral proxy climate records will be used to 1) identify and
define the timing and magnitude of abrupt transitions and extremes in Holocene/Deglacial
climate in the WPWP and determine how abrupt changes in the tropics are related to
previously defined intervals of abrupt change in the extra-tropics; and 2) determine how
changes in the mean climate state of the WPWP tropical region influence the nature of
tropical climate variability on interannual to centennial timescales during the Holocene.
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