New Publication: A 900-year History of New England Temperature
A collaboration between by NE CASC Graduate Fellow Dan Miller with NE CASC PI Raymond Bradley with students and faculty in the department of geosciences at UMass has resulted in the first decade-scale paleotemperature reconstruction for New England, spanning ~900 years. This was a highlight article for the journal Climate of the Past.
Abstract: An emerging method in paleolimnology is the use of branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) in sediments to reconstruct temperature, but their application is hindered by a limited understanding of their sources, seasonal production, and transport. Here, we report seasonally resolved measurements of brGDGT production in the water column, in catchment soils, and in a sediment core from Basin Pond, a small, deep inland lake in Maine, USA. We find similar brGDGT distributions in both water column and lake sediment samples but the catchment soils have distinct brGDGT distributions suggesting that (1) brGDGTs are produced within the lake and (2) this in situ production dominates the down-core sedimentary signal. Seasonally, depth-resolved measurements indicate that most brGDGT production occurs in late fall, and at intermediate depths (18–30m) in the water column. We utilize these observations to help interpret a Basin Pond brGDGT-based temperature reconstruction spanning the past 900 years.
Miller, D. R., Habicht, M. H., Keisling, B. A., Castañeda, I. S., and Bradley, R. S. 2018. A 900-year New England temperature reconstruction from in situ seasonally produced branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs), Clim. Past, 14, 1653-1667
