Climate Change and Earth-Ocean-Atmosphere Systems 

Academic Staff involved in this discipline:
Professor Mike Bickle, Professor Harry Elderfield, Dr Albert Galy, Professor David Hodell, Dr Alex Piotrowski, Dr Luke Skinner, Dr Alexandra Turchyn

Research Staff involved in this discipline:
Dr Judith Bunbury, Dr Hazel Chapman, Dr Jason Day, Dr Tony Dickson, Dr Benoit Dubacq , Dr Philip Alan Goodwin, Dr Anna-Lena Grauel , Dr Mervyn Greaves, Dr Niko Kampman, Dr Gerald Langer, Professor Nick McCave, Dr Sambuddha Misra, Dr Aleksey Sadekov, Dr Adam Scrivner, Dr Natalia Vazquez Riveiros, Dr David Wilson

PhD Students involved in this discipline:
Miss Yama Dixit, Miss Emma Freeman, Miss Julia Gottschalk, Mr Jake Howe, Miss Joanna Kerr, Miss Alexandra Maskell, Miss Caroline Martin, Miss Taryn Noble, Miss Jenny Roberts, Miss Natalie Roberts, Miss Jo Smith 

We have developed a range of chemical, isotopic and sedimentary proxies of the critical parameters needed to describe past climatic states and the processes that force change. We are using them to explore the causes and consequences of rapid climate changes in the last glacial cycle. We have increased the links between the marine, ice-core and terrestrial records and collaboration with the climate modelling community. We have expanded our research into past ocean circulation and into bio-geochemistry. We have recently refurbished our isotope-geochemistry laboratories and facilities.

Current research includes:

• Calibrations of astronomical forcing of climate change records in oceanic sediments.
• Multi-proxy studies of abrupt climate change in the oceans.
• Sedimentological and geochemical tracers of past deep-sea circulation vigour and sediment supply.
• Use of foraminiferal metal chemistry and the stable isotopic composition of biogenic sediments in palaeochemical studies of ocean temperature and nutrient variations.
• Processes and geochemical fluxes associated with earth-atmosphere interaction in chemical weathering.
• Isotopic studies of siliceous and calcareous microfossils for palaeoproductivity and environmental variations.
• Biogeochemical cycling of stable isotopes and elements in marine and terrestrial systems.

We are also interested in supervising research students in the general fields of seawater and sediment geochemistry, particularly using isotope geochemistry to understand water and chemical budgets of the oceans, and in linking understanding of the chemistry of the modern rivers and oceans to weathering history and palaeoceanography. Studies of modern sedimentation also provide a link to understanding past ocean dynamics. 

We have well equipped laboratories with a multi-collector ICP mass-spectrometer, three solid-source and four gas-source mass spectrometers, atomic-emission spectrometer, ICP-MS, C-H-N analyzer, atomic absorption, Sedigraph, a coulter counter, magnetic susceptibility, X-radiography, cathodoluminescence. Thus, we offer topics which incorporate training in geochemical and sedimentological techniques, into research on major current problems in global change and global biogeochemical cycles.

Recent publications in this area.