SCOR Working Group 123

Reconstruction of Past Ocean Circulation (PACE)

Chair(s)
Jean Lynch-Stieglitz (USA) and Catherine Kissel (France)
Other Full Members
Ian Hall (UK), Juan Carlos Herguera (Mexico), Joel Hirschi (UK), Elena Ivanova (Russia), Olivier Marchal (USA), Stefan Mulitza (Germany), Ein-Fen Yu (China-Taipei), and Rainer Zahn (Spain)
Associate Members
Jess Adkins (USA), Eduard Bard (France), Thierry Fichefet (Belgium), Jerry McManus (USA), Ulysses Ninnemann (Norway), and Andrew Weaver (Canada)
Terms of Reference

  1. Assess the existing paleoceanographic methods for reconstructing the history of ocean circulation over the past 120,000 years. Are the existing methods sufficient for a robust reconstruction of past ocean circulation? Are existing chronological tools sufficient to reconstruct distinct ocean circulation states? If not, what developments are necessary?

  2. Assess the available paleoceanographic data for reconstructing the history of ocean circulation over the past 120,000 years. Can robust conclusions on past ocean circulation be drawn from existing data? For what time periods and locations?

  3. Develop recommendations for future approaches to quantitatively assess the hypothesised changes in ocean circulation over the same time scale.

  4. Identify a minimum array of global locations and data types that would help to constrain uncertainties concerning changes in ocean circulation linked to major climate changes, bearing in mind the potential for collecting appropriate geological material as well as the size of the expected circulation signal relative to uncertainties in the methods. Through international co-operation within the IMAGES and ODP, existing cores would be identified and plans for new coring to meet these objectives would be discussed.

Approved
September 2003
Financial Sponsors
SCOR, IMAGES, U.S. National Science Foundation
Meetings

  1. 20-23 March 2005 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
    SCOR/IMAGES Workshop on Past Ocean Circulation

Publications