late 20 th century freshening in the central tropical pacific inferred from coral records
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Late 20 th Century Freshening in the Central Tropical Pacific Inferred from Coral Records. Intan Suci Nurhati Advisor: Dr. Kim Cobb Graduate Student Symposium 2006 School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology. Outline. Central Tropical Pacific climate. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Late 20th Century Freshening in the Central Tropical Pacific
Inferred from Coral Records
Intan Suci NurhatiAdvisor: Dr. Kim Cobb
Graduate Student Symposium 2006School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Outline
Central Tropical Pacific climate
Extracting coralline salinity record
Coral and its paleoclimate proxies
Results & Discussions
(Central) Tropical Pacific Climate
Affected interannually by El Niño, which has a large spatial impact.
Cobb et al. (2003)
Sparse observational data in the Pacific requires paleodata to extend the evolution of El Niño.
Walker Circulation
Coral as a Paleoclimate Archive
Geochemical proxy:
δ18O as SST proxy ratio of 18O and 16O incorporated into coral skeleton f ( sst , salinity )
Limitations: Vital effects Colony topography, etcSolution: Use several samples to cross-validate.
Annual bands on coral at about 1-1.5cm/year
Coral δ18O & Sr/Ca
Depleted δ18O in the late 20th century
Q? Higher SST and/or lower
salinity (freshening)
Imp: Hydrological cycle
Use a SST-only proxy (Sr/Ca) to separate SST and salinity effects on δ18O
Period 1972-98 at 1mm incrm. ICP-AES
RSD = (±0.3%,1σ) ~ 0.44ºC Cobb et al. (2001), Urban et al. (2000)
Calibrating Sr/Ca Data
1. Inter-coral Heads Comparison 1971-89 overlap
(r2 = 0.55 for raw, 0.62 for 5 months running average)
2. Instrumental Data Comparison 1978-89 overlap (r2 = -0.23)
I error bar
SST
Separating SST and Salinity
Unlike δ18O, Sr/Ca does not exhibit a trend in the late 20th century.
Use instaneous change of the function by the variables (SST and salinity) to weight the contribution of each variable (Ren et al. 2002).
Δδ18Ocoral = Δδ18Osst + Δδ18Osw
= ∂δ18O ·ΔSST + ∂δ18O · Δδ18Osw
∂SST ∂δ18Osw
known
calculated from Sr/Ca
a constant
Separating SST and Salinity
SST as well as salinity drive the depletion of δ18O in the late 20th century, with salinity having a bigger contribution.
Salinity has a decreasing trend, implying enhanced precipitation.
δ18O
cora
l (‰
)δ1
8O
sst
(‰)
δ18O
sw (‰
)
Discussions & Conclusions
Modern coral δ18O and Sr/Ca records suggest a late 20th century freshening in the central tropical Pacific.
Agrees with analysis of rain gauge measurement from the central tropical Pacific during 1971-90 (Morrissey and Graham, 1996) that suggest enhanced hydrological cycle.
A modeling study suggests a weakening of the east-west Walker circulation largely due to anthropogenic forcing (Vecchi et al. 2006).
- Thank you -
References:
Cobb, K.M., D.E. Hunter, C.D. Charles. A central tropical Pacific coral demonstrates Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic decadal climate connections. Geophys. Res. Lett. 28(11): 2209-2212, 2001.
Cobb, K.M., C.D. Charles, R.L Edwards, H. Cheng, and M. Kastner. El Niño-Southern Oscillation and tropical Pacific climate during the last millennium. Nature 424: 271-276, 2003.
Morrisey, M.L., and N.E. Graham. Recent trends in rain gauge precipitation measurements from the tropical Pacific: Evidence for an enhanced hydrological cycle. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 77(6): 1207-1219, 1996.
Ren, L., B.K. Linsley, G.M. Wellington, D.P. Schrag, and O. Hoegh-Guldberg. Deconvolving the δ18O seawater component from subseasonal coral δ18O and Sr/Ca at Rarotonga in the southwestern subtropical Pacific for the period 1726 to 1997. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 67(9): 1609-1621, 2002.
Urban, F.E., J. E. Cole, and J.T. Overpeck. Influence of mean climate change on climate variability from a 155-year tropical Pacific coral record. Nature 407, 989-993, 2000.
Vecchi, G.A., B.J. Soden, A.T. Wittenberg, I.M. Held., A. Leetmaa, and M.J. Harrison. Weakening of tropical Pacific atmospheric circulation due to anthropogenic forcing. Nature 441: 73-76, 2006.