Objective
Several recent studies have demonstrated that climate records from Antarctic ice cores are clearly asynchronous with the rapid changes of the Northern Hemisphere. However, paleoclimate data from the rest of the Southern Hemisphere yield conflicting interpretations of interhemispheric synchrony/asynchrony of the climate system. In order to better understand the paleoclimate relationships between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, high-resolution and well-dated paleoclimate data from key-locations of the Southern Hemisphere are needed.
Due to their intermediate location between the terrestrial and marine realms of South America, the sediments deposited in the Chilean fjords (45-55°S) contain a high-resolution record of climate change and paleoceanographic conditions since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. In this project, we propose to reconstruct past climate changes in Southern Chile by a sedimentological, geochemical and mineralogical study of three long sediment cores collected in 2005 in carefully s elected Chilean fjords.
Several proxies will be studied in order to estimate the proportion of terrestrial and marine constituents and to determine the intensity of the terrestrial runoff which is directly linked to the amount of precipitation in the Andes: bulk geochemistry (XRF core scanner with calibration of the data by ICP-AES), geochemical properties of the organic matter (C/N, d13C, d15N), grain size (laser particle analyser) and clay mineralogy (X-ray diffraction). This approach applied to three AMS radiocarbon dated long cores collected along a N-S transect will provide new paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic data that will then be used to discuss the interhemispheric synchrony/asynchrony of the climate system.
Fields of science
Not validated
Not validated
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeochemistry
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologysedimentology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencespalaeontologypaleoclimatology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologymineralogy
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP6-2005-MOBILITY-6
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
OIF - Marie Curie actions-Outgoing International FellowshipsCoordinator
BREMERHAVEN
Germany