Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-27

Reconstructing and Interpreting the Forcing of Climate using Sulfur and Carbon Isotopes

Objective

Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 have increased dramatically over the past ~200 yr, and are likely to continue to increase in the coming decades [IPCC, 2007]. It is a first order goal of the scientific community to understand the implications of this perturbation on the climate system. Climate change predictions from model simulations rely on reconstructions of climate forcings and responses that often cannot be directly measured. Isotopes provide a useful tool to track climate-related processes today and in the geologic past, thus extending our understanding of forcings beyond the instrumental record. At University of St Andrews I will be setting up and developing new and established isotope techniques to further our understanding of climate forcings, responses, and feedbacks on decadal to millennial timescales. There are two distinct yet complementary projects that will form the basis of my research in my first four years at St Andrews, that address gaps in our knowledge of recent climate forcings and that take advantage of the diverse skill set that I am bringing to the EU. I will use a novel technique to measure sulfur isotopes in ice cores to improve the record of climate forcing by sulfate aerosols over the past 2000 yr. By measuring the mass independent fractionation of sulfur from volcanic eruptions recorded in ice cores, it will be possible to determine which volcanoes over the past two millennia were stratospheric, and hence climatically important. I will also use radiocarbon in deep-sea corals to reconstruct the pre-bomb (pre-1950) radiocarbon inventory in the Southern Ocean. This will help constrain the current uptake of anthropogenic CO2 by the ocean, as it will be used to validate carbon cycling in ocean-atmosphere general circulation models.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-CIG - Support for training and career development of researcher (CIG)

Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS
EU contribution
€ 100 000,00
Address
NORTH STREET 66 COLLEGE GATE
KY16 9AJ St Andrews
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
Scotland Eastern Scotland Clackmannanshire and Fife
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0