EAPSI: Assessing New Zealand's changing hydrologic record and paleoclimate

通过扩展气候变率的短期仪器记录，透视现代气候趋势，可以更好地了解气候变化的未来影响。尽管在这些分析中，研究人员倾向于关注与全球变暖相关的极端温度，但由于全球风模式的变化控制着降雨模式和区域水文，降水变化（以及相关的极端水文）可能是人为气候变化的一个重要后果。这在南半球尤其明显，南半球西风的强度和位置对风暴路径有很大影响，因此对陆地中纬度地区（如新西兰南部）的降水变化有很大影响。该项目旨在与新西兰奥塔哥大学的克里斯托弗·梅博士合作，创建高分辨率的古气候和古环境记录。这些记录将用于重建该地区过去的降水变化。为了建立气候变化的综合记录，并从更长远的角度准确地确定新西兰现代水文变化的规模，该项目将使用从新西兰西南部峡湾获得的沉积物岩心的多代理分析来进行全面的古气候重建。这种多代理分析将包括x射线荧光分析、体积密度分析、有机生物标志物分析和磁化率分析。该项目将有助于建立一个泛太平洋古气候综合，该综合应确定南太平洋内过去的转移和强度变化，并为整个南大洋的气候研究提供有用的约束。这将用于评估全球碳循环模型，并可能限制西风对全新世大气二氧化碳浓度的影响。NSF EAPSI奖是与新西兰皇家学会合作资助的。

Future impacts from climate change can be better understood by placing modern climate trends into perspective through extension of the short instrumental records of climate variability. Although researchers tend to focus on extremes of temperature associated with global warming in these analyses, precipitation changes (and related hydrological extremes) are likely to be an important consequence of anthropogenic climate change, due to changes in global wind patterns that control rainfall patterns and the hydrology of regions. This is especially evident in the Southern Hemisphere, where the strength and positioning of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds have a large influence on storm tracks and therefore precipitation changes over terrestrial mid-latitude regions, such as in Southern New Zealand. This projects aims to create high-resolution paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental records in collaboration with Dr. Christopher Moy at the University of Otago, New Zealand. These records will be used to reconstruct past changes in precipitation of the region. In order to create a comprehensive record of climate variability and to accurately place the magnitude of modern hydrologic change occurring in New Zealand in a longer perspective, this project will use a multi-proxy analysis of sediment cores obtained from fjords in Southwestern New Zealand to perform a comprehensive paleoclimate reconstruction. This multi-proxy analysis will include X-Ray Fluorescence analysis, bulk density, organic biomarker analysis and magnetic susceptibility analysis. This project will contribute to constructing a pan-Pacific paleoclimate synthesis, which should identify past shift and strength changes within the South Pacific and provide a useful constraint in climate studies throughout the Southern Ocean. This will then be used to evaluate global carbon cycle models and potentially constrain the westerly wind influence on Holocene atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Royal Society of New Zealand.