Collaborative Research: Co-Evolution of Submillennial and Orbital Scale Climate and Ocean Behavior during the Last 700 kyrs: The Unique Santa Barbara Basin Record

California State University-Long Beach Foundation, Long Beach CA

Investigators

Abstract

The project will investigate abrupt and high-frequency climate change at an ultra-high resolution previously unobtainable before 150 ka, but here spanning most of the 100-kyr climate regime back to ~700 ka. Resolving short-term climate behavior before ~150 ka is critical for understanding processes, thresholds, and feedbacks that contribute to abrupt climate change. Millennial-scale climate oscillations (Dansgaard/Oeshger cycles) reflect major abrupt shifts in the ocean-atmosphere system, yet knowledge of this important behavior is largely confined to the last glacial cycle, owing to the unavailability of suitable older sequences. This study will extend the understanding of these events and processes for the first time by analysis of a superb suite of 32 high-sedimentation rate (~80-120 cm/kyr) cores taken in 2005 on the Santa Barbara Mid-Channel anticlinal trend, where older, uplifted stratigraphic sequences crop out on the ocean floor. The PIs preliminary work confirms that Santa Barbara Basin can reveal climate history in unprecedented resolution for this time span, clearly recording earlier D/O-like cycles and abrupt climate change on decadal time scales. The cores provide ultra-high resolution windows into climatic-oceanographic behavior of the north Pacific through much of the interval dominated by the 100 kyr glacial-interglacial cycles, an interval not previously studied at this resolution. The broader impacts of this study include incorporating Graduate and undergraduate students at three universities will be involved in all aspects of the study. This project will fund (2-3) graduate students to work at CSULB and UC Davis on the paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic investigations based on the geochemical, faunal, and sedimentologic analyses of the cores. This project provides funds for training and support of undergraduates (5-10 total) in laboratory work and research projects at the three institutions. The program will incorporate students from NSF-targeted underrepresented groups as part of the undergraduate research component of the NSF-funded Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program at CSULB. All three researchers in this project have a track record of incorporating climate change topics into frequent presentations for large undergraduate courses and the public.