Coralline red algae as recorders of mid- and higher-latitute paleoclimates

珊瑚红藻作为中高纬度古气候的记录者

• 批准号: 341876-2007
• 负责人: Halfar, Jochen
• 金额: $ 1.48万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2011-01-01 至 2012-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=482334
• 关键词: Coralline; red; algae; recorders; mid

"Climate" is defined as the statistics of weather, and is often quantified for things like monthly averaged temperature and precipitation. While climate has often seemed random and unpredictable, recent advances in climate science point to regularly occurring patterns that impose some order on the climate system. The El Niño, for instance, is the best known "natural pattern" of Earth's climate. This and other climate patterns have characteristic signatures in seasonally changing patterns of wind, air temperature, and precipitation; each pattern also has a typical life time for any given "event". Climate models attempt to predict these patterns and typical life times. Reliable climate models require long-term and high-resolution records of past environmental conditions from different settings. Such data can enable climate forecasts and estimate the human impact on climate. However, instrumental records of environmental variables are limited. This is especially true for mid- and higher latitude oceans, where multicentury reconstructions of intraannual and seasonal marine climate variability are scarce. High-resolution paleoclimate data from these regions are essential as input for global climate models, and necessary in order to distinguish natural and anthropogenically induced climate variability. My research is therefore aimed at generating and interpreting multicentury climate records using geologic climate archives. This proposal will focus on the extraction of climate information from coralline red algae. Coralline red algae, which live in shallow seas, are well suited as recorders of past climates outside the tropics because they (1) are widely distributed in extratropical oceans, (2) are long-lived, and (3) display annual growth increments (similar to tree rings) in a calcified skeleton. Over the next five years I plan to generate multicentury climate reconstructions from the Bering Sea and Northwestern Atlantic- two key regions where poorly understood climate and ecosystem changes have recently had a dramatic impact on fishery yields. The climate reconstructions are expected to yield information on past climate variability, strength and frequency of climate oscillations, and aid in predicting future climate evolution.

“气候”被定义为天气统计数据，通常被量化为月平均气温和降水量等。虽然气候通常看起来是随机且不可预测的，但气候科学的最新进展表明，定期发生的模式对气候施加了某种秩序。例如，厄尔尼诺现象是地球气候中最著名的“自然模式”，这种模式和其他气候模式都具有风、气温和降水的季节性变化模式的特征，每种模式也有一个典型的生命周期。对于任何给定的气候模型试图预测这些模式和典型的生命周期。可靠的气候模型需要对不同环境下的过去环境条件进行长期、高分辨率的记录，从而能够进行气候预测并估计人类对气候的影响。然而，环境变量的仪器记录是有限的，对于中纬度和高纬度海洋来说尤其如此，这些地区的多年内和季节性海洋气候变化的重建数据对于全球气候的输入至关重要。模型，以及因此，我的研究旨在利用地质气候档案生成和解释多世纪气候记录，重点是从珊瑚红藻中提取气候信息。在浅海，非常适合作为热带以外过去气候的记录者，因为它们（1）广泛分布在温带海洋中，（2）寿命长，（3）显示年生长增量在接下来的五年里，我计划对白令海和西北大西洋进行多世纪气候重建，这两个关键地区的气候和生态系统变化最近对渔业产量产生了巨大影响。气候重建预计将产生有关过去气候变化、气候振荡强度和频率的信息，并有助于预测未来的气候演变。