Mechanistically understanding biomineralisation and ancient ocean chemistry changes to facilitate robust climate model validation

从机械角度理解生物矿化和古代海洋化学变化，以促进稳健的气候模型验证

• 批准号: EP/Y034252/1
• 负责人: David Evans
• 金额: $ 222.77万
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FY034252%2F1
• 关键词: Mechanistically; understanding; biomineralisation; ancient; ocean

The study of warm intervals in Earth's geologic past with naturally higher-than-modern atmospheric CO2 is of crucial societal importance because this information provides: i) a way of determining how much temperature is likely to rise as we burn fossil fuels, and ii) an empirical means of assessing the quality of state-of-the-art climate models. Most past climate information comes from 'proxies', which relate small changes in the chemical composition of fossil materials to their environment of formation, of which the shells of the foraminifera (unicellular marine organisms) possibly represent the most widely used archive. Unfortunately, no proxy system is perfect, in that they are all responsive to more than one factor. For example, paleothermometers based on the geochemistry of foraminifera are sensitive to both the temperature and chemistry of the seawater they formed in, the latter of which has changed through time in a poorly understood way. In addition, there is no consensus view on even the basic mechanisms involved in the process by which foraminifera build their shell, such that we don't know when proxy reconstructions are likely to be biased. AMOEBA will directly tackle both issues by making extremely novel observations of living foraminifera to determine how they form their shell, and by generating the necessary records of past chemical change in the oceans. This will facilitate a step-change in the interpretationof quantitative proxy data, transforming the utility of such datasets. AMOEBA will apply this knowledge to a new Cenozoic data compilation, producing accurate estimates of Earth's temperature during key greenhouse intervals. Thus, by facilitating the next generation of model-data comparison, the ability of state-of-the-art climate models to capture key features of greenhouse warmth will be unambiguously assessed for the first time.

在地球地质过去的温暖间隔的研究中，自然比现代大气二氧化碳自然更高的社会重要性是至关重要的，因为此信息提供了：i）确定一种燃烧化石燃料时可能升高的温度可能会升高，而ii）ii）一种经验性的方法来评估当前气候模型的质量。大多数过去的气候信息来自“代理”，它将化石材料的化学成分的微小变化与它们的形成环境相关，其中有孔虫（单细胞海洋生物体）的壳可能代表了最广泛使用的档案。不幸的是，没有代理系统是完美的，因为它们都对多个因素响应。例如，基于有孔虫的地球化学的淡淡温度计对它们形成的海水的温度和化学敏感，后者以一种不知所知的方式改变了。此外，即使是在涉及有孔虫构建其外壳的过程中涉及的基本机制的情况下，也没有共识的观点，因此我们不知道何时可能会偏置代理重建。 Amoeba将通过对生存有孔虫的极为新颖的观察来直接解决这两个问题，以确定它们如何形成壳，并产生过去的海洋化学变化的必要记录。这将有助于解释定量代理数据的解释，从而改变此类数据集的效用。变形虫将将这些知识应用于新的新生代数据汇编，从而在关键温室间隔内对地球温度进行准确的估计。因此，通过促进下一代模型数据比较，将首次明确评估最先进的气候模型捕获温室温暖的关键特征的能力。