Descripción del proyecto
Descubrir los niveles de oxígeno del océano a través de la paleoceanografía
Los océanos, que cubren la mayor parte de la superficie de la Tierra, ejercen una gran influencia en el clima mundial. Esta es tanto en términos de mover el calor alrededor del mundo como de almacenar carbono a través de los ciclos de vida marina. El equipo del proyecto OxyQuant, financiado con fondos europeos, estudia cómo han cambiado estos procesos a lo largo del tiempo examinando las concentraciones de oxígeno en el fondo del mar. Para ello, los investigadores utilizarán técnicas de muestreo de isótopos de yodo y cerio de sedimentos y restos de peces fosilizados en diferentes entornos marinos para crear una aproximación de los niveles de oxígeno del pasado. El objetivo es ofrecer a los paleoceanógrafos una mejor reconstrucción cuantitativa de cómo eran los océanos en el pasado y quizás predecir los cambios climáticos futuros.
Objetivo
Because of their sheer size and tight coupling to the atmosphere the oceans are a pivotal climate regulator. Their interaction with climate is associated with both physical processes such as ocean circulation, which redistribute heat, freshwater, and carbon around the globe, and biogeochemical processes, which ultimately control the strength of the biological carbon pump, and by inference the storage of remineralized carbon in the ocean interior. Seawater oxygen concentrations are intimately linked to both type of processes and are thus a crucial parameter for assessing the state of the oceans today but also in the past. Despite the crucial role these processes play on climate and climate variability, they remain surprisingly poorly understood. While paleoceanography offers a unique opportunity to observe the state and behaviour of the oceans under different boundary conditions, no reliable and widely applicable method for the quantitative reconstruction of past bottom water oxygen concentrations (BWO) has yet been established. Thus, the objective of OxyQuant is to develop and calibrate an innovative proxy toolkit to reliably reconstruct past BWO. To this end, three fundamentally independent approaches for which promising preliminary observations exist will be calibrated using a range of sediments retrieved from contrasted marine environments. While the first approach associated with the sedimentary concentrations of redox-sensitive trace metals, has already attracted much interest over the past decades, the other two methods, namely the organic matter – associated iodine and the stable isotope composition of authigenic cerium (δ142Ce) archived in fossilised fish debris, are novel and have yet to be comprehensively tested. Combined with their application in two case studies on glacial – interglacial time scales, OxyQuant will provide the paleoceanographic community with the means to finally fill the gap of quantitative reconstructions of past BWO.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global FellowshipsCoordinador
24148 Kiel
Alemania