Project components

This project focuses on the role and the impact of the oceanic carbon cycle on climate oscillations and vice versa and the strategy to meet our objectives is encapsulated in the following four steps:

1. Reconstruction of the past oceanic carbonate chemistry on selected ocean sediment cores (multi-proxy approach) to deconvolute the contribution of the different carbon pumps (physical-, biological- and alkalinity-pump) and sediment dynamics (dissolution/preservation) to atmospheric pCO₂ change.

2. Compilation of pelagic carbonate production on a global scale to assess the impact of changes in the rate of calcification on the Rain Ratio and hence on  atmospheric pCO₂ on natural (G-IG) and "anthropogenic" (decades to centuries) timescales.

3. Each of these research areas (1 and 2) will be accompanied by integrated numerical modeling (small-scale process models).

4. These three steps will be merged into regional and global numerical models to investigate the interdependence between the Rain Ratio « Sediment Dynamics « Carbonate Chemistry « Atmospheric pCO₂ « Climate Change on G-IG as well as on "anthropogenic" timescales