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.

Niño-Southerno-Southern起源于热带太平洋E，例如干旱和洪水。在新西兰的国家水与大气研究所（NIWA）的研究中，这项研究将通过从珊瑚礁样品中收集化学测量来改善对厄尔尼诺现象和拉尼娜事件的科学理解，以重建洛雷气候变化的专家是一项专家街道珊瑚的气候变化将在较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太平洋收敛。南太平洋的收敛区和旋转性的珊瑚样品将使用X射线计算的层析成绩进行放射性年龄段在过去的千年中，我将在奥克兰Niwa的Dr. and Lorree和Usementation的珊瑚样品中进行珊瑚样品，这是在马里兰大学的古气候共同解放者的未来同位素分析的珊瑚样品。与新西兰皇家学会合作。