Patrick Rafter
University of South Florida, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
During the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago, carbon dioxide moved out of the atmosphere and the planet cooled. Where that carbon went, and how ocean and atmosphere circulation changed along with it, are still open questions.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
paleoclimate
paleoceanography
radiocarbon
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2028
What they work on
- Test whether Indian Ocean bottom water was unusually old during the last ice age by comparing the radiocarbon ages of fossil shells with sediment ages in four new cores from across the basin.
- Estimate past deep current speeds from sortable silt, a sediment grain-size measure, and combine them with radiocarbon data in an inverse model to explain changes in deep Indian Ocean ventilation and carbon storage.
- Reconstruct the strength of the Tehuantepec gap winds over about the last 30,000 years using radiocarbon in Gulf of Tehuantepec sediments, which records upwelling of radiocarbon-poor deep water.
- Test a proposed Atlantic–Pacific ocean–atmosphere feedback involving the gap winds and atmospheric Rossby waves using paleoclimate general circulation models, data products and forward modeling.
More about the research
The lab tackles these questions using radiocarbon, a radioactive form of carbon whose decay acts like a clock. Radiocarbon reveals how long deep water has been cut off from the air and how strongly winds pull deep water up to the surface. One project looks for carbon stored in the deep Indian Ocean. The other uses sediments off Mexico to reconstruct past winds that connect the Atlantic and Pacific.
Why it matters
This work tests where carbon was stored during the last ice age and how winds linking the Atlantic and Pacific behaved. The results could show whether the glacial Indian Ocean's ability to store carbon has been underestimated. They could also constrain past atmospheric circulation, tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures and moisture transport between ocean basins. That information could help scientists judge how these systems may respond to today's rapid climate change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: Was there an anomalous Indian Ocean carbon reservoir? Searching for old radiocarbon and quantifying Ice Age changes in deep Indian Ocean ventilation
NSF · Oct 2025 – Sep 2028
Collaborative Research: Characterizing Northern Hemisphere Atmospheric Variability from Central American Wind Gap-Induced Upwelling
NSF · Feb 2024 – Jun 2027
Closest labs
Lowell Stott
University of Southern California, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Collect sediment cores from high-sedimentation-rate sites in the deep western North Pacific during a research cruise to fill a major data gap.
Jean Lynch-Stieglitz
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test how changes in tropical winds alter thermocline depth across the Indo-Pacific by running sensitivity experiments in a high-resolution ocean model.
Jordan Abell
Lehigh University, PA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether North Pacific deep-water formation and an active Pacific Meridional Overturning Circulation existed during the warm Pliocene, using multi-proxy records from four IODP sediment cores.
The school
University of South Florida: 20 labs on PI Pages, $522M a year on research, 305 research doctorates a year.
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