PLEASE NOTE: Application deadline date 08 Jan 2024. Applications are no longer being accepted for this project
Project Overview
Shifting rainfall patterns and seasons represent an alarming consequence of human-driven global climate change. Yet even the sign (wetter/drier) of future change is uncertain in some regions. This project examines the response of continental climates to global warmth in the past to study natural forcing and evaluate uncertain future predictions.
Project Description
Global warming has already reached 1°C above pre-industrial levels because of greenhouse gas emissions. The polar regions are losing ice mass, the ocean is heating up and rainfall patterns are shifting.
To help test divergent climate predictions for the future and to understand natural climate change in the past we need datasets much longer than those possible by direct observation. You will study intervals of CO2-induced global warmth from the geological past.
We will develop palaeoclimate records from deep sea drill cores that contain both marine and terrigenous sediments (riverine material and wind-blown dust). These will be used to study the interactions between tectonics, insolation, ice-sheets and ocean circulation that control the regional response to global warmth.
There is flexibility to focus the project to match your interests. Potential foci include: (i) Regions where climate model reconstructions of the past are especially poor (e.g. North Africa, see references). (ii) Regions where predictions of the future are clear (e.g. aridification is predicted for the Mediterranean, California and Southern Africa in the coming decades) but palaeorecords are contradictory. (iii) Past intervals where global climate changed radically but the response of these and other regional hotspots is unknown (e.g. the warm Pliocene, the warm Miocene and the Eocene-Oligocene transition) (references available on request).
The INSPIRE DTP programme provides comprehensive personal and professional development training alongside extensive opportunities for students to expand their multi-disciplinary outlook through interactions with a wide network of academic, research and industrial/policy partners. The student will be registered at the University of Southampton and hosted in the School of Ocean and Earth Science.
Specific training will include:
Travel: There are opportunities to participate in a scientific cruise and work in mainland Europe, the US and Japan.
Travel to international scientific meetings to present project results is encouraged and supported. Project-specific training will include:
- Stratigraphy and chronology of deep-sea drillcores
- Stable oxygen, carbon and nitrogen isotope and radiogenic (Sr, Nd) isotope analysis of terrestrial and marine samples
- X-ray Fluorescence core scanning and elemental composition of microfossils
- Earth system modelling (e.g., cGENIE) – dynamic responses of marine oxygen and seawater temperature to climate; geochemical data assimilation.
- Correlation, integration, and interpretation of multi-proxy datasets from deep-sea cores for palaeoclimatic and palaeoceanographic reconstructions
Crocker et al., (2022) Astronomically controlled aridity in the Sahara since at least 11 million years ago. Nature Geoscience 15, 671–676.
Hopcroft and Valdes (2021) Paleoclimate-conditioning reveals a North Africa land–atmosphere tipping point. PNAS 118 No. 45 e2108783118
Munday et al., (2023) Valley formation aridifies East Africa and elevates Congo Basin rainfall. Nature, 615 276-279.
Further relevant literature available on request from: paul.wilson@noc.soton.ac.uk
