Centennial-Scale Climate Variability in New England During the Holocene: New Insights from Compound-Specific Hydrogen Isotope Analysis

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

This award aims to acquire the first set of centennial-scale, high-resolution hydrogen isotope records of Holocene climate variations for New England from five selected lakes. The lakes lie in a south to north transect, and have similar hydrology to Crooked Pond, MA which has been shown to record the temperature changes for the last 14,000 years. One lake has annual lamination, allowing further calibration of hydrogen isotope proxy against instrumental records. The approach is particularly suited for studying New England lakes because carbonate minerals (which have provided numerous high-resolution climate records based upon stable isotopes of oxygen) are not preserved in New England lake sediments. This research will provide new and independent measurements of Holocene climate change in New England with resolution more than one order of magnitude higher than currently available data (mainly pollen assemblages and lake level data). The new data acquired from this work will be a critical step for understanding the fundamental mechanisms of the Holocene climate variation and predicting the future climate change in North America. Several fields and research goals will benefit from further development of the techniques to reconstruct lake water Deuterium from compound specific isotope analyses of organic matter. There is graduate student training on this project.