Project B1

Seasonally resolved continental temperature and precipitation changes: Permanent ENSO conditions in the Eocene of Central Europe?

Clemens Schmitt (PhD)

Principal Investigators: Iuliana Vasiliev, Andreas Mulch (Senckenberg), Bodo Ahrens (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Project B1 will mainly use organic biomarker geochemistry to elucidate temperature and precipitation seasonality during select Cenozoic continental warm periods. The project aims at assessing annually resolved variations in temperature and precipitation recovered from high temporal resolution records. Branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGT) will be used to reconstruct average annual air temperatures (MAAT) and pH values, whereas seasonal changes in precipitation as an important part of the hydrological cycle will be addressed by compound-specific δ2H analyses, on both terrestrial (long-chain n-alkanes) and aquatic (short-chain n-alkanes) biomarkers. International collaboration partners are hosted at Utrecht University (NL).