Marine Terrestrial Variability of the Labrador Sea Region Over Decadal to Millennial Time Scales

Investigator: Gifford H. Miller gmiller@colorado.edu  (Principal Investigator current)
              Jonathan T. Overpeck  (Principal Investigator former)

Abstract

Abstract  ATM-9708418  Overpeck, Jonathan T. and Miller, Gifford H  University of Colorado, Boulder  Marine-Terrestrial Variability of the Labrador Sea Region over Decadal to   Millennial Time Scales    Large scale variations in climate and vegetation are known to have taken place in the eastern Canadian/Greenland Arctic on time scales from years to millennia, and are likely to have had important links with the broader atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Well-dated records of this change are just becoming available using preliminary networks of both annually-laminated (varved) and AMS radiocarbon-dated lake sediment records.  This award supports a project to collect and analyze lake sediment records around the Labrador Sea, and thus provide a comprehensive reconstruction of the decadal to millennial-scale environmental variability of this region.  This will generate a much improved understanding of how the Labrador Sea modulates ocean thermohaline circulation, as well as North Atlantic and Arctic climate, across  time scales relevant to assessing future climatic change in these regions.  This work will also provide the modern calibration data needed to quantify many existing proxy environmental records across the whole of the eastern Canadian Arctic/Greenland region, and thus provide improved quantitative space/time reconstructions needed to evaluate the ability of predictive models to simulate future Arctic and global environmental change.