This research will address long-standing questions related to the formation of deep water masses in warm climate intervals and the role of the resulting circulation in maintaining weak large scale thermal gradients. The researchers aim to expand the current database of early Paleogene Pacific water mass composition reconstructions by using Neodymium (Nd) and Lead (Pb) isotopic records from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP).
The researchers will test three related hypotheses for deep-water circulation during the greenhouse climate of the early Cenozoic, as follows: 1) deep waters were convected in the high latitudes of the Pacific; 2) deep waters did not convect in the Eastern Tethys; and 3) the deep basins of the Atlantic and Pacific were not connected.
The broader impacts involve the training and education of two doctoral students and substantive research experience for two undergraduate students. The researchers will contribute to teaching and outreach activities through the development of course materials and learning modules and will incorporate results into existing activities such as the Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology. Reconstructions will be disseminated to the community as base maps for future paleoclimatic modeling and proxy studies.
