Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL120100050
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,079,069.00
Summary
Sea level change and climate sensitivity. This project will aim to improve understanding of climate and sea-level change on timescales relevant to longer-term planning, by characterising the relationship between past sea-level/ice-volume change and other key climate factors such as temperature and greenhouse gases, and by quantifying how rapidly sea level may adjust to climate change.
Understanding total long-term sea-level consequences. This project addresses the urgency in long-term infrastructure planning to understand the long-term "equilibrium" sea-level-change consequences from today’s exceptionally rapid climate change. Understanding this requires detailed sea-level reconstructions back to warm periods with similar CO2 levels to today (~3.5 million years ago), but these remain insufficiently defined. To advance, the project will deliver a next-generation, multi-million ....Understanding total long-term sea-level consequences. This project addresses the urgency in long-term infrastructure planning to understand the long-term "equilibrium" sea-level-change consequences from today’s exceptionally rapid climate change. Understanding this requires detailed sea-level reconstructions back to warm periods with similar CO2 levels to today (~3.5 million years ago), but these remain insufficiently defined. To advance, the project will deliver a next-generation, multi-million-year sea-level reconstruction that includes dynamically evolving (time-dependent) interactions between critical climate factors. This will then be applied with other palaeoclimate data to reconstruct equilibrium relationships between sea level, temperature, and CO2 at currently unattainable precision. Read moreRead less
Glacio-isostatic effects on geodetic data: Ice and sea level implications. Glacio-isostatic (GI) effects are recorded in geological and geodetic data sets and mask other deformational processes. This project builds on past work using geological data with a focus on combining geodetic and geological evidence to improve knowledge of the past ice sheets, separate out effects of past and present deglaciation and develop improved models for the mantle rheology to include time-dependencies in mantle r ....Glacio-isostatic effects on geodetic data: Ice and sea level implications. Glacio-isostatic (GI) effects are recorded in geological and geodetic data sets and mask other deformational processes. This project builds on past work using geological data with a focus on combining geodetic and geological evidence to improve knowledge of the past ice sheets, separate out effects of past and present deglaciation and develop improved models for the mantle rheology to include time-dependencies in mantle response (transient creep in the first instance). The project aims to provide a complete and predictive description of the GI effects on geodetic data, consistent with geological evidence, such that other tectonic, hydrologic and sea-level signals can be estimated free of these effects.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100042
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$350,000.00
Summary
Long-term variability of the Australian monsoon. This project aims to address large uncertainties in Australia’s hydroclimate projections, by reconstructing Australian monsoon variability over the past three million years. The project expects to generate new knowledge to quantify the frequency and amplitudes of extreme rainfall and drought in Northwest Australia. By providing essential new information about the timing, frequency, and intensity of past drought and extreme rainfall, the project is ....Long-term variability of the Australian monsoon. This project aims to address large uncertainties in Australia’s hydroclimate projections, by reconstructing Australian monsoon variability over the past three million years. The project expects to generate new knowledge to quantify the frequency and amplitudes of extreme rainfall and drought in Northwest Australia. By providing essential new information about the timing, frequency, and intensity of past drought and extreme rainfall, the project is expected to enable more accurate climate projections required for effective adaptation and mitigation. This project will also benefit the Australian archaeology community, by providing a much-needed environmental context for mapping Australian pre-history.Read moreRead less
Global climate change and coastal landscape evolution in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred in southern Australia during a geologically recent time interval termed the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.2 million to 700 thousand years ago) and an interglacial period some 400,000 years ago. Using innovative geochronological, geochemical and modelling techniques, the environmental changes that shaped modern Australian coastal landscapes, in ....Global climate change and coastal landscape evolution in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred in southern Australia during a geologically recent time interval termed the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.2 million to 700 thousand years ago) and an interglacial period some 400,000 years ago. Using innovative geochronological, geochemical and modelling techniques, the environmental changes that shaped modern Australian coastal landscapes, including the intensification of aridity and their timing will be examined. The project will yield new knowledge about the sensitivity of landscapes to current and ongoing environmental changes and derive explanatory models of the rates and characteristics of landscape response to assist future coastal environmental management.Read moreRead less
Pre-industrial sea-surface temperatures in the Australian region. Humanity faces an enormous challenge as there is much debate on whether the world is warming up and when this started. This project will document sea-surface temperature records over the last millennium for the Australian region and provide data of critical importance to global climatology and oceanography that precede the instrumental record.
El Niño in a changing climate: novel long-term perspectives from Pacific corals and model simulations. El Niño and La Niña events have a profound influence on Australian drought conditions and rainfall. Forecasting is hampered by short climate records, which do not capture the full range of El Niño dynamics. This project aims to generate records of unprecedented length and spatial coverage from key sites across the western and central equatorial Pacific. Five hundred years of continuous, monthly ....El Niño in a changing climate: novel long-term perspectives from Pacific corals and model simulations. El Niño and La Niña events have a profound influence on Australian drought conditions and rainfall. Forecasting is hampered by short climate records, which do not capture the full range of El Niño dynamics. This project aims to generate records of unprecedented length and spatial coverage from key sites across the western and central equatorial Pacific. Five hundred years of continuous, monthly-resolution climate data will be integrated with output from state-of-the-art climate model simulations to distil the key processes that cause El Niño to vary. This project aims to provide major advances in determining the full range of El Niño and La Niña behaviour, leading to improved forecasts of future changes, with consequences for Australia's water security.Read moreRead less
Deep Atlantic’s role in millennial atmospheric carbon dioxide changes. This project aims to fill in a critical knowledge gap in global carbon cycle research, by generating the first high-resolution deep Atlantic carbonate ion and nutrient records for the last 150,000 years. The project will derive air-sea carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange signals, which permit straightforward evaluation of the deep Atlantic’s role in millennial atmospheric CO2 changes under various climate conditions. The intended o ....Deep Atlantic’s role in millennial atmospheric carbon dioxide changes. This project aims to fill in a critical knowledge gap in global carbon cycle research, by generating the first high-resolution deep Atlantic carbonate ion and nutrient records for the last 150,000 years. The project will derive air-sea carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange signals, which permit straightforward evaluation of the deep Atlantic’s role in millennial atmospheric CO2 changes under various climate conditions. The intended outcome of this project is to substantially improve our understanding of the mechanisms that govern the global carbon cycle. This should provide significant benefits including the assessment of models used to predict future global warming due to anthropogenic CO2.Read moreRead less
Mid-depth Atlantic circulation during the Last Glacial Maximum and deglaciation. The history of ocean circulation at the intermediate water depth remains controversial, limiting our understanding of the interplay of ocean circulation, climate changes, and the global carbon cycle. This project aims to generate trace elemental and isotopic records for 10 key locations in the Atlantic Ocean, which constrain physicochemical properties of water masses at unprecedented temporal resolution during the l ....Mid-depth Atlantic circulation during the Last Glacial Maximum and deglaciation. The history of ocean circulation at the intermediate water depth remains controversial, limiting our understanding of the interplay of ocean circulation, climate changes, and the global carbon cycle. This project aims to generate trace elemental and isotopic records for 10 key locations in the Atlantic Ocean, which constrain physicochemical properties of water masses at unprecedented temporal resolution during the last glacial maximum and the subsequent deglaciation. This multi-proxy approach will reconcile controversy and pin down the evolution of mid-depth Atlantic circulation in the past, and thereby substantially improve our understanding of the climate system.Read moreRead less
Deep-sea carbonate cycles and their role in glacial-interglacial atmospheric CO2 changes. The causes for past atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) changes and their mechanistic links to the histories of climate and ocean carbonate chemistry remain elusive, but may hold future-relevant information. This project aims to use novel methods to quantify deep ocean carbonate ion concentrations, a critical but poorly constrained parameter of the global carbon cycle, at 10 key locations spanning the global o ....Deep-sea carbonate cycles and their role in glacial-interglacial atmospheric CO2 changes. The causes for past atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) changes and their mechanistic links to the histories of climate and ocean carbonate chemistry remain elusive, but may hold future-relevant information. This project aims to use novel methods to quantify deep ocean carbonate ion concentrations, a critical but poorly constrained parameter of the global carbon cycle, at 10 key locations spanning the global ocean during the last 350 000 years. By feeding new data into a model, this project aims to gain critical insights into mechanisms controlling past deep-sea carbonate cycles and atmospheric CO2 changes, thereby leading to improved understandings of the climate system.Read moreRead less