Assessing the role of the Indian Ocean in global climate change: A paleoperspective
Final Report Abstract
The INDOPAL project provides new monthly coral Sr/Ca records from a key region of the Indian Ocean Dipole. The proxy records extent from 1923-2008 and from 1817-1904. The modern Sr/Ca data accurately resolves the magnitude of the pronounced cooling caused by positive Indian Ocean Dipole events. The sub-fossil coral Sr/Ca data indicates marked changes in IOD frequency and amplitude over time scales of decades to centuries. These changes in IOD characteristics are consistent with changes in mean climate inferred from lake and marine sediment cores that indicate wet conditions in coastal East Africa and cool and dry conditions in Indonesia. The new proxy data clearly shows that the instrumental record is too short to resolve the full spectrum of IOD variability. A better characterization of IOD variability is therefore necessary in order to assess the response of the IOD to anthropogenic climate change.
Publications
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2008, Reconstructing seawater δ18O from paired coral δ18O and Sr/Ca ratios: Methods, Error Analysis and Problems, with examples from Tahiti (French Polynesia) and Timor (Indonesia), Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 72, 2841–2853
Cahyarini, S. Y., Pfeiffer, M., Timm. O., Dullo, W.-Chr., Garbe-Schönberg, D.
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2009, Three monthly coral Sr/Ca records from the Chagos Archipelago covering the period of 1950 to 1995 A.D.: Reproducibility and implications for quantitative reconstructions of sea surface temperature variations, International Journal of Earth Sciences, 98, 53-66
Pfeiffer, M., Dullo, W.-Chr., Zinke, J., Garbe-Schönberg, D.
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2009, Western Indian Ocean marine and terrestrial records of climate variability: a review and new concepts on land–ocean interactions since AD 1660, International Journal of Earth Sciences, 98, 115-133
Zinke, J., Pfeiffer, M., Timm, O., Dullo, W.-Chr.
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Twentieth century sea surface temperature and salinity variations at Timor inferred from paired coral δ18O and Sr/Ca measurements, Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans
Cahyarini, S.Y., Pfeiffer, M., Nurhati, I.S., Aldrian, E., Dullo, W.-Chr., Hetzinger, S.
