Objective Understanding and quantifying the impacts of climate change at the regional and hemispheric scales are particularly difficult with respect to changes in rainfall and temperature patterns that lead to extended droughts and flooding events. Isotopic records in speleothems are increasingly used to determine climate variability on land and for data-model comparisons. However, transferring speleothem records into quantitative climate parameters suffers from a major limitation: speleothem formation processes result in geochemical disequilibrium and there is currently no way to correct for it in paleoclimate data. SPADE will shift the treatment of paleoclimate archives from regarding them as recorders of slow geological processes to consideration of geological material as recording much faster chemical reactions. As such, they cannot be assumed to form at equilibrium. SPADE will create a new framework, based on one classic and two novel isotopic tracers in carbonates (δ18O-Δ17O-Δ47) to quantify disequilibrium in cave records and overcome this underlying limitation. SPADE’s unique approach is based first on laboratory experiments that isolate chemical processes of speleothem formation, to test their respective effects on isotopic disequilibrium. Then speleothem analog experiments and modern cave material are combined to create speleothem specific calibrations for these isotopic proxies. These SPADE results will then be applied to classic paleoclimate records of dryland hydrology, such as Soreq Cave (Israel) and Devils Hole (Nevada). SPADE will address long standing climatic hypotheses regarding the interplay between temperature, amount of rainfall, surface evaporation, moisture sources, and regional climate connections in these drought vulnerable regions, and will make these records much more useful. A detailed understanding of disequilibrium will enable the use of these innovative geochemical tools in speleothems and more broadly, in other paleoclimate carbonate archives. Fields of science natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencespalaeontologypaleoclimatologynatural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistryinorganic compoundsnatural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrologynatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changesnatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologygeomorphologyspeleology Keywords Clumped isotopes speleothems Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2016-COG - ERC Consolidator Grant Call for proposal ERC-2016-COG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant Coordinator THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM Net EU contribution € 2 000 000,00 Address Edmond j safra campus givat ram 91904 Jerusalem Israel See on map Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM Israel Net EU contribution € 2 000 000,00 Address Edmond j safra campus givat ram 91904 Jerusalem See on map Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
