Centennial-Scale Climate Variability in New England During the Holocene: New Insights from Compound-Specific Hydrogen Isotope Analysis

该奖项旨在从五个选定的湖泊中获得新英格兰全新世气候变化的第一套百年尺度、高分辨率氢同位素记录。这些湖泊位于一个从南到北的样带，与马萨诸塞州的克鲁克池塘有着相似的水文特征，后者记录了过去14000年的温度变化。其中一个湖每年都有层压，可以根据仪器记录进一步校准氢同位素代用物。这种方法特别适合研究新英格兰的湖泊，因为碳酸盐矿物（根据氧的稳定同位素提供了许多高分辨率的气候记录）没有保存在新英格兰的湖泊沉积物中。该研究将为新英格兰全新世气候变化提供新的、独立的测量方法，其分辨率比现有数据（主要是花粉组合和湖泊水位数据）高出一个数量级以上。这项工作获得的新数据将是理解全新世气候变化的基本机制和预测未来北美气候变化的关键一步。从有机物的化合物特定同位素分析中重建湖水氘的技术的进一步发展将使若干领域和研究目标受益。这个项目有研究生培训。

This award aims to acquire the first set of centennial-scale, high-resolution hydrogen isotope records of Holocene climate variations for New England from five selected lakes. The lakes lie in a south to north transect, and have similar hydrology to Crooked Pond, MA which has been shown to record the temperature changes for the last 14,000 years. One lake has annual lamination, allowing further calibration of hydrogen isotope proxy against instrumental records. The approach is particularly suited for studying New England lakes because carbonate minerals (which have provided numerous high-resolution climate records based upon stable isotopes of oxygen) are not preserved in New England lake sediments. This research will provide new and independent measurements of Holocene climate change in New England with resolution more than one order of magnitude higher than currently available data (mainly pollen assemblages and lake level data). The new data acquired from this work will be a critical step for understanding the fundamental mechanisms of the Holocene climate variation and predicting the future climate change in North America. Several fields and research goals will benefit from further development of the techniques to reconstruct lake water Deuterium from compound specific isotope analyses of organic matter. There is graduate student training on this project.