Paleoceanography and Global Change
Leader: A. Voelker
The charting of global change through elucidation of paleoceanographic records is a hugely important area of geoscience and oceanography at present. In deep water, it is typically based on continuous successions of pelagic sediments that have accumulated very slowly, whereas thicker more rapidly-deposited contourite sequences offer expanded higher-resolution records. However, deconvolving the different signatures from these records is not straightforward. A multidisciplinary approach is required for better relating ocean circulation and bottom currents to their deposits and therefore for determining how best to read the paleoceanographic and paleoclimate signatures from contourite deposits.
Specific topics:
- Exploring the ocean-climate nexus through improved research methodologies (both oceanographic and sedimentological), involving tracers for water mass identification, computer modelling of circulation and sediment accumulation, new proxies for bottom current velocity, and the sediment response to climate and other controls.
- Focussing interest on the paleoclimatology and paleoceanography reconstruction of contourite depositional systems associated with oceanic gateways.
- Establishing global correlation of contourite paleoceanographic signatures that are inter-hemisphere and inter-ocean basin, as well as intra-ocean basin.
