Yair Rosenthal
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Earth & Environmental Science
Starting about 6,000 years ago, carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere began to rise. That is unusual.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
paleoclimate
paleoceanography
Holocene
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Reconstruct movements of the Southern Westerly Winds during the Holocene and five earlier interglacials (MIS 5e, 9e, 11c, 13, 19) using Chilean Margin sediments from site J1001.
- Build a foraminiferal oxygen isotope stratigraphy and an alkenone sea surface temperature record spanning the last 900,000 years, and compare them with CO2, climate and insolation records.
- Use nitrogen isotope records to assess changes in Southern Ocean upwelling and nutrient use during warm periods, relative to bottom-water temperature and carbonate ion (ΔCO3) records.
More about the research
In earlier warm periods, greenhouse gases fell as sunlight-driven warming eased. Why CO2 rose during the current warm period, the Holocene, is still unclear. Early farming may have contributed. Another explanation is that a shift in the Southern Westerly Winds (SWW), strong winds circling the Southern Ocean, changed how the ocean stores carbon. This collaborative project asks whether such wind shifts were unique to the Holocene. It will compare the Holocene with past warm periods over the last 900,000 years.
Why it matters
Knowing whether the CO2 rise of the last 6,000 years came from natural wind-driven changes in the Southern Ocean or from early human farming bears on how large a role humans have played in climate change. These records could also improve understanding of how the Southern Ocean stores carbon during warm climates.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Brittany Hupp
George Mason University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Build records of single-shell foraminifera chemistry and shape across the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) at IODP Site U1580, where shells were not dissolved by ocean acidification.
Catherine Davis
North Carolina State University, NC·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure which particle types planktic foraminifera collected off U.S. coasts gather, how quickly they clump them, and how this changes the sinking and carbon export of marine snow, using laboratory cultures.
The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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