Aridity in the Greater Middle East: paleoclimate insights into human-induced climate change and the history of our hominid ancestors

由于人类的强迫作用，地球在本世纪变暖，降水模式将发生变化。计算机气候模型预测，大中东地区的干旱将加剧，该地区已经包含了世界上水资源最紧张的国家的一半，从印巴边境延伸到新月沃土，穿过阿拉伯半岛到非洲之角。然而，这些预测的可信度很低，因为该地区处于非洲、亚洲和欧洲气候不同驱动因素影响的边缘，对模式的性能了解甚少。地质记录提供了有价值的气候背景。例如，海洋沉积物岩心记录的增加的尘埃通量被用来表明美索不达米亚干旱化与4000年前阿卡德帝国的崩溃之间存在直接联系。然而，已发表的记录过于稀疏、零碎和简短，无法全面了解降雨对自然强迫的反应。您将通过利用海洋钻探计划从北印度洋的海洋钻探岩心来解决这个问题，以提高对该地区过去1000万年中已知温暖和/或考古意义的战略间隔的水文气候变化的理解。你们的工作将改进对未来几个世纪气候对变暖的反应的预测

As Earth heats up this century in response to human forcing, precipitation patterns will change. Computer climate models predict that aridity will intensify in the Greater Middle East, a region that already contains half of the world's most water-stressed nations and stretches from the India-Pakistan border into the Fertile Crescent, across Arabia into the Horn of Africa. Yet, confidence in these predictions is low because the region lies at the fringes of influence of different drivers of African, Asian and European climate, where model performance is poorly understood. Geological records provide valuable climate context. For example, increased dust fluxes recorded by marine sediment cores have been used to suggest a direct link between Mesopotamian aridification and the collapse of the Akkadian empire ~4000 years ago. Published records, however, are too sparse, fragmentary and short to gain a full appreciation of rainfall response to natural forcing. You will address this problem by exploiting Ocean Drilling Program marine drill-cores from the northern Indian Ocean to improve understanding of hydroclimate variability in the region over the past 10 million years during strategic past intervals of known warmth and/or archaeological significance. Your work will improve predictions of climate response to warming over coming centuries