EGS XXVI General Assembly, Nice, France, March 2001

PC5. The 1000 year record:

Event Information

Decadal variations in climatic oscillations attracted the interest of both climate modelers as well as paleoclimatologists. Sea surface temperature (SST) is an important factor in reconstructing global change. SST influences e.g. ocean-atmosphere gas exchange, global precipitation/evaporation patterns, ocean circulation, and sea level. Corals and sponges provide excellent archives to bridge the gap between observation or record and models, with respect to high-resolution time scales covering several hundreds of years. These high-resolution marine records will help to provide a link to terrestrial and limnic archives. The analysis of amplitutes, frequencies and rates of climatic change may allow to differentiate between natural variation and anthropogenic impact as well as to improve forecast-models. Although established proxies, like the Å18 O-method for reconstructing SST is quite successful, its application is limited due to the influence of precipitation/evaporation changes and variations of continental ice volume. Thus, independent SST proxies like Sr/Ca, Mg/Ca alkenones and others are necessary to develop and highly desirable. This session will focus on both aspects and invites contributions to: - Observation and models of the last 1000 years of climatic variability and - the development and improvement of paleotemperature proxies.

Preliminary List of Solicited Speakers

Co-Sponsorship