Project Details
Projekt
Indian Monsoon evolution across the Miocene- Pliocene boundary (6-3.5 Ma)
Applicant
Professor Dr. Wolfgang Kuhnt
Subject Area
Geology
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565783347
The Late Miocene to Early Pliocene interval offers an excellent opportunity to investigate the forcings and feedbacks driving climate change over multiple time scales on a warmer Earth with boundary conditions close to the present and near future. Pronounced oscillations between warmer and cooler climate states occurred during this interval, which included some intense global cooling episodes and potential transient NH glaciations. Understanding the drivers of successive climate reversals and the interaction between tropical and high-latitude climates requires continuous, highly resolved marine archives from tropical monsoonal areas. The Andaman Sea represents a key region to reconstruct past tropical hydrology, as it is located within the Earth’s strongest hydrological regime in the core geographic region of the Indian Summer Monsoon. A complete and well-preserved sediment archive, drilled at Site U1447 during IODP Expedition 353 “Indian Monsoon Rainfall” will allow reconstruction of Indian Summer Monsoon variability at a temporal resolution of 2-3 kyr. The project will focus on the interval 6 to 3.5 Ma and will integrate benthic and planktic foraminifer stable isotope data with elemental proxy data to monitor the variability of monsoonal rainfall and its response to high-latitude climate change. We will test the hypotheses that (1) the monsoonal response to precessional insolation was stronger on a warmer Earth without extended NH polar ice, (2) Austral-Asian monsoonal subsystems varied in phase with NH summer insolation, (3) Late Miocene (5.9-5.5 Ma) and Early Pliocene (4.9-4.5 Ma) transient NH glaciations led to monsoon failures in both hemispheres and (4) global warming was associated with the expansion and intensification of tropical oxygen minimum zones. We will integrate our new data with modelling experiments in order to leverage their respective strengths and to improve understanding of warm climate dynamics.
DFG Programme
Infrastructure Priority Programmes
Co-Investigator
Dr. Ann Holbourn
