Ocean and Climate (OC)

Marine environmental archives store significant information on past environmental changes. This information can be retrieved by analyzing chemical or physical properties, or from the fossil content of such archives. For example, the analysis of deep-sea sediments can yield information on abrupt climate changes during the last ice age. The chemical compositions of fossil corals provide high resolution records of past temperature variations of the water in which a coral grew.

Our aim is to employ such marine archives to reconstruct and promote a better understanding of the causes of past environmental change. The research activities are guided by the following themes:

• Quantification of climate variations at interannual-to-interdecadal timescales using high-resolution marine archives.
• Changes in oceanic nutrient budgets and their impact on coastal high-productivity systems.
• Influence of climate-driven changes in the flux of terrigenous matter into the ocean on sedimentation and biological productivity.

The effects of global and regional environmental change are studied during the Holocene and Late Pleistocene (last 60 thousand years) and for other significant tectonic and climatic events during the last 15 million years. Special attention is given to the interaction between continental climate development, coastal upwelling, and biological productivity around Africa. A great emphasis is placed on joining the data-based reconstructions and numerical Earth-system models to achieve the research goals.