GLOBAL CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

BACKGROUND: The deep sea floor contains a record of earth conditions slowly, and often continuously, accumulated in the microfossil skeletons of marine plankton and benthos. Marine sediments are a nearly complete record book of change through time in the great physical, chemical and biological systems of the oceans. Since the oceans are the lower boundary layer of the atmosphere, the source of water and heat to the atmosphere and the climate system component with the greatest mass and inertia, the marine record provides us with a view of a key element of planet Earth's living and ever changing environmental story. An exciting example of ocean-atmosphere dynamics is the El Nino phenomenon.

WORK BEING DONE AT NIU

My work, and that of my students', has focused on reconstructing patterns of surface ocean biological productivity. These patterns are directly linked to surface ocean currents, atmospheric circulation and the distribution of important chemicals (like carbon dioxide). For example, the oceanic biology modifies the exchange of carbon dioxide between the ocean and the atmosphere, and the oceans ultimately strongly influence atmospheric carbon dioxide content. This may be important to the temperature regulation of the planet since carbon dioxide is a Greenhouse Gas.

Reconstructing past ocean properties, like ocean productivity, requires Tracers. These are features of the ocean sediments, or record over time, that we can interpret in terms of ocean characteristics we are interested in. Our work shows that the abundances of species of benthic, bottom dwelling, micro-organisms called Foraminifera are directly related to the biological productivity of the the overlying oceanic surface waters.

We have developed a tool, based on benthic foraminifera, for reconstructing open ocean biological productivity and found that it is applicable to the global ocean. We are now funded by the National Science Foundation to examine changes in biological productivity in the equatorial Pacific over the past 150,000 years. The equatorial Pacific is the largest ocean area exchanging heat and gases with the atmosphere, and it is the largest higher productivity area in the global ocean. Understanding the response of the tropical Pacific to global climate change is an interesting and important challenge. The climate extremes of the past 150,000 years provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the range of possible behaviors of the tropical ocean.

Related pages

Press here for a link to the ocean biogeochemistry page OCEANIC BIOGEOCHEMISTRY

Press here for a link to Environmental Statistics

Press here for a link to Recent Publications in this area (publica.htm#global environmental)

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