P2C2: Stalagmite Records of Tropical Climate from Northern Borneo: Interglacial and Termination Structure Across Several Glacial Cycles

California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

Funding is provided to build upon previous research on paleoclimatology from speleothems in Borneo to extend their research from caves in this region and investigate three key climate questions: 1) What is the response of precipitation in the tropics to changes in the amplitude and phasing of overhead radiation during interglacials? 2) What is the behavior of the Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) precipitation over the last several terminations? 3)Does the characteristic pattern of Dansgaard/Oeschger (D/O) and Heinrich events packaged into Bond Cycles appear in the WPWP? The last 500,000 years indicate multiple interglacial states during which tropical boundary conditions (i.e., sea level, sea-surface temperatures, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels) are roughly constant, but solar insolation forcing is very different. The researchers will use the stalagmite records from interglacials to investigate the Tropic's sensitivity to changes in insolation forcing. This research will support a female post-doctoral fellow and provide new climate records from a new archive that may bring greater understanding of the functioning of monsoons in the heavily populated Tropics.