FP 21: ISOTRACE: New isotopic tracers of the chemistry-climate relationship

• Applicant: Dr. Carl A.M. Brenninkmeijer
• Subject Area: Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry
• Term: from 2005 to 2007
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5446902

From a theoretical point of view, climates and chemical states of the Earth’s atmosphereshould evolve jointly, one influencing the other. But as of today, this complex relationship islargely unexplored. The major obstacle to explore and establish such a relation is that paleoreconstructionsof the chemical state of the atmosphere are extremely difficult to establish,simply because so far we have not studied a set of tracers with the required quality. The aimof this project is to make such tracers available through analytical developments. The projectproposed here has the main goal of develping new tools to determine past changes in thechemical state of the atmosphere... and to provide the first elements from whichreconstruction of this very important relationship between climate and chemistry can bederived from natural archives. The central player in our strategy is the oxygen isotopiccomposition of atmospheric trace compounds, including the rarely measured abundance of the170 isotope. The oxygen isotopic composition will be used to trace in time some of the mostimportant oxidation reactions occurring in the atmosphere.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Thomas Röckmann