This project will use speleothems from southwestern Oregon, a region that is heavily influenced by maritime air masses emanating from the Pacific Ocean, to develop new and innovative high-resolution records in western North America. Available well-dated climate records from the Pacific Northwest show interannual-to-decadal variability but span only the last ~500 years and are thus unable to address whether high-frequency climate variability is a persistent feature over longer time intervals. The researchers will fill this science gap by obtain a decadal-scale records from speleothems. Their main scientific objective is to document how coupled atmosphere-ocean-terrestrial interactions have affected North America during the Holocene.
The project will also explore linkages between Holocene climate variability in the latitude band of the northern hemisphere Westerlies where they enter North America, and other regions such as the North Atlantic, which appears to respond to quasi-periodic forcing by solar irradiance, and the equatorial Pacific, in which the frequency and intensity of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events are hypothesized to have changed in complex ways in response to gradual changes in Earth's orbit through the Holocene.
The science resulting from this project will aid in the development of high-resolution (decadal) records of regional climate in the Pacific Northwest from a near-coastal site. These records are expected to improve understanding of past climate variability, and enhance projections of future climate change. Undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars will be involved in this study thereby providing an excellent opportunity to participate and contribute to research in an emerging field of inquiry. The results of this research will be translated into educational products for visitors to Oregon Caves National Monument.
