Arctic Field Projects
Project Title: Collaborative research: Nonlinearities in the Arctic climate system during the Holocene (Award# 0909334)
PI: Briner, Jason (jbriner@buffalo.edu)
Phone: (716) 645.6800 ext. 3986
Institute/Department: U at Buffalo, Department of Geology
IPY Project? NO
Funding Agency: US\Federal\NSF\OD\OPP\ARC\ARCSS
Program Manager: Dr. Neil Swanberg (nswanber@nsf.gov)
Discipline(s): | Geological Sciences\Climate Change | Geological Sciences\Paleolimnology |
| Project Web Site(s): |
| NSF_Award_Info: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0909... |
| Logistics: http://www.polar.ch2m.com/Files/PDFs/Briner0909334PlanFinal2... |
Science Summary:
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). A major goal of the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program is to understand the variability of the Arctic system and the feedbacks that lead to pronounced system changes, such as those that are currently taking place. Rapid changes in the Arctic climate system that occurred in the relatively recent past can be compared with the output of climate models to improve the understanding of the processes responsible for nonlinear system change. In particular, this study focuses on the transition between the Holocene thermal maximum (HTM) and the onset of Neoglaciation, and on the step-like changes that occurred subsequently during the late Holocene. The millennial-scale cooling trend that followed the HTM coincides with the decrease in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation driven by slow changes in Earth’s orbit. Despite the nearly linear forcing, the transition from the HTM to the Little Ice Age (1500-1900 AD) was neither gradual nor uniform. To understand how feedbacks and perturbations result in rapid changes, a geographically distributed network of proxy climate records is proposed to study the spatial and temporal patterns of change, and to quantify the magnitude of change during these transitions. Intellectual merit. The 12 PIs of this collaborative project will use lacustrine sediments to produce 13 new high-resolution proxy climate records of the past 8000 years. The study sites form two focus regions (eastern Beringia and the NW Atlantic) that generally coincide with the nodes of the surface temperature expression of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). This project will nearly double the number of high-resolution lacustrine records that extend through the last two millennia, and will generate some of the first highresolution records that capture the HTM. During the HTM, summer sea-ice cover over the Arctic Ocean was likely the smallest of the present interglacial period; certainly it was less extensive than at any time in the past 100 years, and therefore affords an opportunity to investigate a period of warmth similar to what is projected during the coming century. This study focuses on lakes because lakes are the most widely distributed sources of proxy climate records that consistently extend through the post-glacial interval. Because climate change is amplified in the Arctic, the climate signal preserved in Arctic lake sediments should be stronger than elsewhere. The proxy records generated in this project will use conventional and newly emerging techniques to document the spatio-temporal patterns of abrupt environmental changes, and to derive quantitative estimates of past summer temperature and hydroclimate variables. Most lakes have been cored previously and show potential for generating high-quality proxy records. Five of the lakes contain laminated sediment with annually resolved records; others have high sedimentation rates (>0.5 mm yr-1) for sub-decadal resolution across the climate transitions. Confidence in the paleoclimate reconstructions will be bolstered by a multi-proxy approach, and by replicate lake records in each of the focus regions that will be used to distinguish basin-scale thresholds from regional-scale climate shifts. This project builds on on-going climate-modeling experiments that use NCAR’s Climate System Model (CCSM3) to study the sensitivities of the Arctic system to volcanism and solar variability. A new data-model comparison proposed for this study will test whether the most prominent changes in the Arctic system during the past 8 ka, as reconstructed from the proxy records, can be explained by a plausible combination of system-component conditions coincident with prolonged volcanism. The experiments, conducted with NCAR collaborators, will focus on the elements of the Arctic system (e.g., AO and extent of sea ice) that participate in abrupt transitions, and that might elicit nonlinear changes in the future. Broader impact. This project will contribute to understanding climatic variability, a key challenge facing society. Specifically, it will provide insights into the feedback processes that cause the climate system in the Arctic to change faster than any other region on Earth. The spatial network of paleoclimate reconstructions will serve as key benchmarks for validating climate models and for improving their ability to accurately simulate nonlinear change, including changes in sea-ice cover. This project brings together experts from the paleo- and the climate-modeling communities to resolve the apparent underestimate of the sensitivity of sea ice to change within climate models. Improving models for future climate projections will contribute to the “Climate Variability and Change” major program element of the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The project will also contribute to several ARCSS initiatives including, “Changing Seasonality in the Arctic System” (CSAS), among others, and to the new NSF initiative, “Paleo Perspective on Climate Change” (P2C2). It will bring together international collaborators from Europe and Canada who are involved in several new and proposed parallel initiatives to expand the spatial network of high-resolution proxy-climate records across the Arctic. The project will train nine graduate students and at least as many undergraduates in global-change and system-science research, and will support two postdocs and several junior faculty members.
Logistics Summary:
This is a 10-institute collaborative led by N. Arizona U (Kaufman 0909332), and including U at Buffalo (Briner 0909334), UAF (Wooller 0909523), Lehigh (Yu 0909362), Alaska Pacific (Loso 0909322), U Pittsburgh (Abbott 0908200), U. Illinois (Hu 0907986), CU Boulder (Miller/Axford/Lehman 0909347), U Mass (Bradley 0909354), Idaho State (Finney 0909310). The twelve PIs will use lacustrine sediments to produce fourteen new high-resolution climate records of the past 8000 years. The pattern of climate changes recorded in the proxy records can be studied and compared with the output of climate models to gain an understanding of the non-linear processes involved in system change. Most research groups plan separate field campaigns. Hence, logistics details are found under each individual grant. In 2010 a team of five will conduct helicopter-based fieldwork staged out of Ilulissat in west-central Greenland. After arriving in Kangerlussuaq via the ANG logistics chain, the team will fly commercially to Ilulissat, where they will prepare for and launch a field campaign, travelling to the first of three sites by helicopter. The team will establish a tent camp base and spend about five days working, using an inflatable boat with a motor to access sites, before tearing down the camp and moving, again via helicopter, to a second camp. This pattern will repeat an additional time and then the team will take-out via helicopter and return to Ilulissat. Next, the five researchers will split into two teams and work on projects unrelated to the NSF research, one at a lakes camp on the ice sheet, the other at Disko Island. (CPS will not support these efforts.) The team will reunite in Ilulissat and travel via commercial air to Kangerlussuq. From there, they will access the ANG logistics chain to depart. In 2011 a team of four will base out of Clyde River on Baffin Island and use snowmachines to travel to Foxtrap Lake. There they will establish a tent camp and collect long cores.
CPS support in Greenland includes: ANG coordination for personnel and cargo, commercial airline tickets and freight within Greenland, lodging in Ilulissat and Kangerlussuaq user days, helicopter support, an inflatable boat/motor, and camping/safety/communications equipment. In Canada, CPS will provide: - camping and safety equipment, - maintenance for NSF-owned snowmachines. All other logistics not mentioned above will be paid by the investigators from the grant.
| Season | Field Site | Date In | Date Out | #People |
| 2010 | Greenland - Disko Island | 08 / 14 / 2010 | 08 / 19 / 2010 | 2 |
| 2010 | Greenland - Ilulissat | 07 / 20 / 2010 | 08 / 17 / 2010 | 5 |
| 2010 | Greenland - Kangerlussuaq | 07 / 19 / 2010 | 08 / 22 / 2010 | 5 |
| 2011 | Canada - Clyde River, Baffin Island | 4 | ||
| 2011 | Canada - Foxtrap Lake | 4 |
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