EAPSI:Developing a Coral-Based Climate Reconstruction to Better Understand Tropical Pacific Hydroclimate

EAPSI：开发基于珊瑚的气候重建以更好地了解热带太平洋水文气候

• 批准号: 1515034
• 负责人: Alex Lopatka
• 金额: $ 0.5万
• 依托单位: Lopatka Alex
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2016-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1515034&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Developing; Coral; Based; Climate

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which originates in the tropical Pacific, can cause significant changes in climate and weather patterns across the globe, such as droughts and floods. How the El Niño-Southern Oscillation will respond to anthropogenic climate change remains unanswered in the scientific literature. Through a collaboration with Dr. Andrew Lorrey of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, this research will improve the scientific understanding of El Niño and La Nina events by collecting chemical measurements from coral reef samples to reconstruct changes in climate over intervals of the last millennium. Dr. Lorrey is an expert climatologist and curator of a south Pacific coral archive. This study will extend climate observations over a longer period of time allowing scientists to put current climate change into a longer paleoclimate context.In the southwestern tropical Pacific, the dominant climate feature is a band of low-level moisture, known as the South Pacific Convergence Zone. During an El Niño event, this zone shifts towards the equator, resulting in unusually dry conditions in the south Pacific and unusually wet conditions in the central equatorial Pacific. Over 100 coral samples have been collected from the southern Cook Islands and will be used to reconstruct hydrological changes associated with movements of the South Pacific Convergence Zone and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Well preserved coral samples will be radiometrically-dated and age-modeled using x-ray computed tomography techniques. Stable isotopes in the coral skeleton vary with temperature and hydrological changes. Therefore, corals can be used to model changes in climate. To reconstruct climate over the past millennium, I will sample pristine, well-dated coral samples with Dr. Andrew Lorrey and use instrumentation at NIWA in Auckland, New Zealand to prepare the coral samples for future isotopic analyses at the Paleoclimate Co-Laboratory at the University of Maryland. This award is funded in collaboration with the Royal Society of New Zealand.

起源于热带太平洋的厄尔尼诺南部振荡可能会导致全球气候和天气模式的重大变化，例如干旱和地板。在科学文献中，厄尔尼诺 - 南方振荡将如何响应人为的气候变化。通过与新西兰国家水与大气研究所（NIWA）的安德鲁·洛雷（Andrew Lorrey）博士的合作，该研究将通过从珊瑚礁样品中收集化学测量来重建上一千千年间隔的气候变化，从而改善对厄尔尼诺现象和拉尼娜事件的科学理解。 Lorrey博士是南太平洋珊瑚档案馆的专家气候学家和策展人。这项研究将在更长的时间内扩展气候观察，使科学家能够将当前的气候变化置于更长的古气候环境中。在西南热带太平洋地区，主要的气候特征是一支低级水分的乐队，称为南太平洋收敛区。在厄尔尼诺事件期间，该区域向等期器转移，导致南太平洋的罕见干燥条件，而中央对等效性太平洋的潮湿条件很少。已经从南库克群岛收集了100多种珊瑚样品，并将用于重建与南太平洋融合区和厄尔尼诺南南振荡相关的液压变化。保存良好的珊瑚样品将使用X射线计算机断层扫描技术进行放射性日期和年龄模型。珊瑚骨骼中的稳定同位素随温度和液压变化而变化。因此，珊瑚可用于建模气候变化。为了在过去的千年中重建气候，我将与安德鲁·洛雷（Andrew Lorrey）博士对原始的，良好的珊瑚样品进行采样，并在新西兰奥克兰的尼瓦（Niwa）使用仪器，以准备珊瑚样品，以便在马里兰大学（University of Maryland）的古燃料共同存在的珊瑚样品中，以供将来的同位素分析。该奖项由与新西兰皇家学会合作资助。