Quaternary magnetic records from North Atlantic sediments: geomagnetism, environmental magnetism, and stratigraphy

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Sediment "drifts" from the deep ocean (where sediments accumulated at elevated rates) are important archives of climate change and of geomagnetic field behavior on centennial and millennial time scales. Secular variation, magnetic excursions, polarity transitions and relative paleointensity (RPI) have been recorded with high-fidelity in North Atlantic sediments drifts, and sediment drift sequences recovered during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 303/306 offer new opportunities. Magnetic excursions have duration too brief to be recorded by deep-sea sediments with typical (lower) sedimentation rates. The better quality records that are time-calibrated indicate that magnetic excursions are paired polarity reversals in which the reversed polarity state is maintained for only about 1-3 kyr, or less. Similarly, the structure of long-lived polarity transitions can only be resolved at elevated sedimentation rates. We are investigating the combined use of oxygen isotopes (ostensibly a signature for global ice volume) and RPI (ostensibly a global signal of Earth's magnetic field strength) as means of improving global correlations. This exercise will test the usefulness of RPI for global correlation, and will provide estimates of excursion duration, rates of change at polarity transitions, and provide a time-calibrated template of RPI. Orbital periods (at ~100 and ~41 kyr) are embedded in many RPI records and there is continuing debate regarding the origin of this orbital power; it may represent lithologic contamination of the RPI records or an inherent characteristic of the geomagnetic field. We plan to build on our understanding of the origin of the orbital power by development of "depth-derived" age models for isotope and RPI events (e.g. Terminations, RPI minima etc.) by using compaction-compensated sedimentation models between geomagnetic reversals, and also between reversals and excursions.This work has implications for both stratigraphy and geophysics. Magnetic stratigraphy within polarity chrons, using RPI and magnetic excursions, appears to provide a much-needed means of global correlation for paleoclimate and other studies that involve synchronizing sedimentary records. The resolved time frames can be applied to records of field behavior to infer rates of change and field geometries that constrain numerical simulations of the geodynamo, and hence constrain mechanisms that govern the generation of the Earth's magnetic field. In addition to the scientific goals of the project, the research is supporting the training of a postdoctoral researcher and graduate and undergraduate students, and is contributing to support of research infrastructure at the University of Florida.