ELMO · Evolution of Low-latitude climates and Monsoon Onset
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2023-08-31
- EU contribution
- €214,159
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Evolution of Low-latitude climates and Monsoon Onset
Changes in low-latitude sea surface temperature (SST) has far reaching consequences on Earth’s radiative budget, hydrological cycle, and ecosystems. Yet records of low-latitude SST during warmer-than-modern climates across the Cenozoic (0 – 60 million years ago (Ma)) remain limited. Further, the acquisition of accurate SST estimates in the geological past has inherent weaknesses with traditionally applied proxies for temperature reconstruction subject to both biological and geochemical caveats. This has often resulted in diverging absolute and relative SSTs, impacting our ability to constrain changes in meridional and zonal temperature gradients and corresponding climate feedbacks fundamental to better understanding both the influence and sensitivity of the low-latitudes to changing boundary conditions and global climate change. Across the past decade there has been a concentrated effort to develop and apply clumped isotope thermometry as a viable approach for ocean temperature reconstruction from foraminifera. This approach is thought to be outwith biological vital effects and the requisite assumptions regarding past seawater chemistry due to the clumping of 13C-18O bonds being dictated, in isolation of seawater chemistry, by thermodynamics. Thus, one of the aims of ELMO is to apply this proxy approach to provide additional constraints on reconstructing past SST from a low-latitude site across the Cenozoic. To complement and better understand proxy reconstruction methods, ELMO will reconstruct Mg/Ca-temperatures, the traditional approach to temperature reconstruction using foraminifera shell geochemistry, to provide a direct comparison between temperatures derived from clumped isotope analysis. In addition to reconstructing a long-term SST record, the oceanographic conditions of the targeted site (IODP U1443, southern Bay of Bengal) are influenced by monsoonal forcing from the Indian Monsoon system. A secondary aim of ELMO is thus, to identify if any changes in temperature variability gained from individual foraminifera trace element analysis (Mg/Ca) using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) can provide additional insights on the onset and evolution of the modern Indian Monsoon system.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Reconstructing past climate provides a powerful means to investigate how human-induced warming may be manifested in global climate. Over the last 65 million years, Earth experienced periods of extreme warmth with elevated greenhouse gas concentrations similar to projections of future climate. Of particular importance is understanding how low-latitude climate may respond to this warming due to its significance on both a local and global scale. At the local scale, low-latitude climate exerts a significant influence on the socio-economies of Earth’s most densely populated regions. Whilst at the global scale, low-latitude derived heat and moisture gets distributed poleward via a dynamic interplay of oceanic-atmospheric interactions. Thus, it is critical to fully understand a) how the low-latitudes will respond to this warming and b) the respective feedbacks on global climate. Yet characterisation of low-latitude climate during periods of warmer-than-modern climates is poorly constrained due to lack of data and limitations with the proxy methods applied to reconstruct climate variables (e.g. sea surface temperature (SST)). The past decade has seen the development of a new temperature proxy, clumped isotope thermometry, that does not suffer from the same limitations as other methods. ELMO will generate the first clumped isotope-based low-latitude records of SST and hydroclimate across the Cenozoic, including warm intervals that serve as analogues for future climate, from fossil carbonate shells (foraminifera). The novel analytical approach combining low (clumped isotopes)- and high-resolution (in-situ trace element analysis) methods will yield temperature reconstructions on a range of timescales relevant for assessing the different aspects of low-latitude and global climate evolution. ELMO will also, through comparison, provide new insights on methods of climate reconstruction applied thus far and lead to a more reliable picture of past climate in the low-latitudes.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN · BergenCoordinatorNorway
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union