EAPSI:Developing a Coral-Based Climate Reconstruction to Better Understand Tropical Pacific Hydroclimate

EAPSI：开发基于珊瑚的气候重建以更好地了解热带太平洋水文气候

• 批准号: 1515034
• 负责人: Alex Lopatka
• 金额: $ 0.5万
• 依托单位: Lopatka Alex
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2016-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1515034&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Developing; Coral; Based; Climate

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which originates in the tropical Pacific, can cause significant changes in climate and weather patterns across the globe, such as droughts and floods. How the El Niño-Southern Oscillation will respond to anthropogenic climate change remains unanswered in the scientific literature. Through a collaboration with Dr. Andrew Lorrey of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, this research will improve the scientific understanding of El Niño and La Nina events by collecting chemical measurements from coral reef samples to reconstruct changes in climate over intervals of the last millennium. Dr. Lorrey is an expert climatologist and curator of a south Pacific coral archive. This study will extend climate observations over a longer period of time allowing scientists to put current climate change into a longer paleoclimate context.In the southwestern tropical Pacific, the dominant climate feature is a band of low-level moisture, known as the South Pacific Convergence Zone. During an El Niño event, this zone shifts towards the equator, resulting in unusually dry conditions in the south Pacific and unusually wet conditions in the central equatorial Pacific. Over 100 coral samples have been collected from the southern Cook Islands and will be used to reconstruct hydrological changes associated with movements of the South Pacific Convergence Zone and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Well preserved coral samples will be radiometrically-dated and age-modeled using x-ray computed tomography techniques. Stable isotopes in the coral skeleton vary with temperature and hydrological changes. Therefore, corals can be used to model changes in climate. To reconstruct climate over the past millennium, I will sample pristine, well-dated coral samples with Dr. Andrew Lorrey and use instrumentation at NIWA in Auckland, New Zealand to prepare the coral samples for future isotopic analyses at the Paleoclimate Co-Laboratory at the University of Maryland. This award is funded in collaboration with the Royal Society of New Zealand.

厄尔尼诺-南方涛动起源于热带太平洋，可能导致全球气候和天气模式的重大变化，如干旱和洪水。厄尔尼诺-南方涛动将如何应对人为气候变化仍未在科学文献中得到解答。通过与新西兰国家水和大气研究所(NIWA)的安德鲁·洛瑞博士合作，这项研究将通过收集珊瑚礁样本的化学测量数据来重建上个千年期间的气候变化，从而提高对厄尔尼诺和拉尼娜事件的科学理解。洛瑞博士是一位专业气候学家，也是南太平洋珊瑚档案馆的馆长。这项研究将延长气候观测的时间，使科学家能够将当前的气候变化置于更长的古气候背景中。在热带太平洋西南部，主要的气候特征是一条低层湿度带，被称为南太平洋辐合带。在厄尔尼诺事件期间，这一区域向赤道移动，导致南太平洋异常干燥，赤道中部异常潮湿。从库克群岛南部采集了100多个珊瑚样本，将用于重建与南太平洋辐合带运动和厄尔尼诺-南方涛动有关的水文变化。保存完好的珊瑚样本将使用X射线计算机断层扫描技术进行放射性年代测定和年龄建模。珊瑚骨架中的稳定同位素随温度和水文变化而变化。因此，珊瑚可以用来模拟气候变化。为了重建过去千年的气候，我将与安德鲁·洛瑞博士一起采集原始的、测年准确的珊瑚样本，并在新西兰奥克兰的NIWA使用仪器准备珊瑚样本，以便将来在马里兰大学的古气候联合实验室进行同位素分析。该奖项是与新西兰皇家学会合作资助的。