HR: 08:00h
AN: U21F-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Integrated studies of Milankovitch solar forcing and climate response: strategies for understanding climate processes
AU: * Ravelo, A C
EM: acr@es.ucsc.edu
AF: University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street Ocean Sciences Department, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, United States
AB: An understanding of climate dynamics and processes, particularly those that operate on long time scales, can be derived from paleoclimate data when the forcing and the climatic response is well-known. Such is the case with Milankovitch forcing - changes in the latitudinal and seasonal distribution of solar forcing at the top of the atmosphere are precisely known, and the climate response to that forcing is recorded in sediments throughout the world's oceans and on land; in between the forcing and response is a ‘black box' that represents the oceanic and atmospheric dynamics that must be understood in order to build theory and models that can be used to predict future climate change. Drilling to recover long continuous records that include many realizations of climate cycles through epochs both colder and warmer than today, is crucial in order to obtain a dynamic range of climate states comparable to the amplitude of predicted future global warming. Such drilling is currently being supported and facilitated by programs like the International Continental Drilling Program and the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. Isolating mechanisms of climate change can be approached by first assuming that regional signals are generated by regional processes and that the remaining unexplained variance is related to teleconnections or far-field effects between regions. Tests of theory can often result from the comparison of regional signals from different time periods with different mean climate conditions, hence the need for improved spatial and temporal coverage of Milankovitch-resolving records around the globe. Examples of tractable problems, that can be attacked by coordinated research efforts amongst observationalists (geologists) and dynamicists, will be given. These include constraining the causes of glacial advance and retreats, of changes in the tropical Pacific temperature patterns, and of California margin ocean upwelling and coastal continental climate change.
DE: 0473 Paleoclimatology and paleoceanography (3344, 4900)
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 3344 Paleoclimatology (0473, 4900)
DE: 4900 PALEOCEANOGRAPHY (0473, 3344)
DE: 4910 Astronomical forcing
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting