The Southern Westerlies during the Holocene: Paleoenvironmental reconstructions from chilean lake, fjord, and marine sediments combined with climate modelling
Principal Investigators: Helge Arz (GFZ Potsdam), Matthias Prange (University of Bremen), Frank Lamy (AWI Bremerhaven)
Project Scientists: Vidya Varma (University of Bremen)
Overview map showing the approximate location of the envisaged working areas. The map additionally shows the general pattern of sea-level pressure (black lines), continental precipitation (color scale), and offshore sea surface temperatures (gray scale) around southern South America.
The climate of southern Chile is strongly influenced by the southern
westerly wind belt. It therefore represents a key region to investigate
Holocene changes in the intensity and latitudinal position of this
important wind system, especially considering a possible role of the
westerly winds in the global atmospheric CO2
budget as recently suggested. The main objective of this project is to
use a multi-proxy approach based on sedimentological and novel organic
proxies to reconstruct multidecadal-to-millennial-scale changes in
temperature, vegetation, and humidity in southern Chile during the
Holocene. These proxy results will be combined with transient climate
model sensitivity experiments for different Holocene solar forcing
scenarios in order to elucidate a potential forcing mechanism. Lake,
fjord, and open ocean archives encompassing the center of the westerly
winds will be investigated, with the advantage of not only establishing
a link between these different environments, but also of covering a
wide latitudinal range of high-resolution paleoenvironmental archives
(33S-53S) in a region of strong climate gradients. Model experiments
will be carried out with the comprehensive global Community Climate
System Model (CCSM), version 3.0.
Quantitative paleo-temperature reconstructions, semi-quantitative paleo-hydrology reconstructions, coupled climate modelling
Archives
Marine records (off Chilean coast), Chilean lake records |
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