Miocene development of the Asian monsoon and oceanographic response in the Bay of Bengal

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The Mid Miocene Climate Transition (MMCT, ~13.8 Ma) was an abrupt and permanent episode of global cooling, Antarctic ice sheet expansion and global biotic changes that have been linked by some to erosion and weathering of the Himalaya (e.g. Clift et al. 2008; Armstrong et al. 2011; Kender et al. 2014). The proposed research, to be carried out by PDRA Fox at the University of Nottingham, on new cores collected during IODP Expedition 354 (Bengal Fan), will provide vital information on palaeoceanographic changes in the Bay of Bengal during the mid Miocene including the MMCT (13-16 Ma), and shed new light on the evolution of the Asian monsoon system that affects both the oceanography of this system and Himalayan erosion. In addition to testing the hypothesis of enhanced erosion of the Himalaya at this time, the results of the proposed investigation will provide crucial information for the IODP objective of understanding how the Himalayan-Tibet orogenesis interacted with the Earth's climate over this important interval. This includes forcing of the climate due to palaeoceanographic evolution and atmospheric CO2 uptake, as well as retroaction of the monsoonal climate on the tectonic region via erosion (France-Lanord et al., 2014; Kender et al. 2014). We propose to tackle these hypotheses through high resolution planktonic foraminiferal stable isotope (d18O and d13C) and trace metal (e.g. Mg/Ca) analyses.