Collaborative Research: Scientific Drilling in Lake Malawi, East African Rift

该奖项旨在支持美国对一项高度合作的国际科学钻探考察的贡献，该考察旨在通过从马拉维湖恢复长岩芯来收集新数据，以帮助了解地球气候。利用全球湖钻探800钻井系统（GLAD800），将尝试从东非大裂谷南端恢复一个可追溯到地球过去约80万年的长岩心。该研究的主要科学目标是：1)研究热带非洲陆地气候对低纬度日照和高纬度冰体轨道强迫变化的响应；2)确定高频气候变化是否以干湿气候循环的形式叠加在冰期-间冰期变化上；3)研究非洲气候年际变率如何作为长期气候变化的结果而变化。如果研究人员取得成功，结果研究将通过提供关键气候区域热带气候的高分辨率陆地记录，推动全球变化研究领域向前发展。拟议与欧洲和非洲的科学同事合作，作为智力和财政伙伴，大大提高了这一努力取得成功的可能性。从马拉维湖钻探中获得的经验教训将提供有关使用移动钻探系统（如GLAD800）作为古气候研究工具的效用和实用性的信息。

This award provides support for the U.S. contribution to a highly collaborative international scientific drilling expedition to collect new data to aid in understanding Earth's climate by recovering long cores from Lake Malawi. Recovery of a long core from the southern end of the East African Rift Valley dating some 800,000 years into the Earth's past will be attempted with the use of the Global Lake Drilling 800 Drilling System (GLAD800).The key scientific goals of the proposed research are to: 1) examine the response of the tropical terrestrial African climate to changes in low-latitude insolation and high-latitude ice volume orbital forcing, 2) determine if high-frequency climate variations are superimposed on glacial-interglacial variations in the form of wet/dry climate cycles, and 3) examine how inter-annual African climate variability may have changed as a result of longer-term climate variations.If the researchers are successful, the resulting research will move the field of global change research forward by providing a high-resolution terrestrial record of tropical climate in a key climatic region. The proposed collaboration with scientific colleagues from Europe and Africa, as both intellectual and financial partners, greatly enhances the potential for success of this endeavor. The lessons learned from drilling in Lake Malawi will provide information as to the utility and practicality of using a mobile drilling system such as the GLAD800 as a tool for paleoclimatic research.