Evaluation of centennial-millennial eastern Indian Ocean climate variability & mechanisms during the Holocene: Surface & thermocline reconstructions

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole MA

Investigators

Abstract

Evaluation of centennial-millennial eastern Indian Ocean climate variability & mechanisms during the Holocene: Surface & thermocline reconstructions Delia Oppo Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Abstract This project seeks to understand the climatic influences and dynamics, on multidecadal, centennial, and millennial time scales, of the tropical Eastern Indian Ocean by reconstructing changes in the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). The PI proposes to generate Mg/Ca- and d18O data from multiple species of planktonic foraminifer from different depth habitats through the mixed layer and thermocline to produce glacial, deglacial, and Holocene reconstructions of sea surface and thermocline temperatures and d18Oseawater from rapidly accumulating marine sediments (>60 cm/ky) that were previously collected by Univ. Bremen colleagues from the eastern Indian Ocean west of Sumatra and south of Java. The research will explore SST variability and cyclicity of the IOD in the Indian Ocean warm pool during the last 25,000 years, as well as focus on specific late Holocene time periods such as the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age. The project will also attempt to link IOD variability with changes in ENSO, the Asian and African monsoons and circulation through the Indonesian Throughflow.