Marine Scientists to Investigate Role of Equatorial Pacific in Global Climate System
Filed under: Discovery, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, News & Resources, Press Releases, Scientific Ocean Drilling, Understanding
On March 10, 2009, an international team of scientists set sail for the equatorial Pacific aboard the scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution for the first of two Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) expeditions.
A second expedition will follow immediately, commencing in May 2009 - both belong to a single science program called the Pacific Equatorial Age Transect (PEAT).
The results will lead to a clearer understanding of Earth's climate over the past 55 million years - a vital component to knowing what future course the planet's climate will take, scientists believe.
The team will employ the vessel’s unique capabilities and recover sediments and data from the sub-seafloor. Earlier scientific ocean drilling expeditions to this region of the Pacific yielded rich discoveries about past climate conditions, biological productivity and the past position of the Pacific tectonic plate relative to the equator. However, these did not obtain essential continuous sediment records.
Building on this knowledge, the two PEAT expeditions aim to drill and recover seafloor sediment cores containing a continuous record of the equatorial Pacific throughout the Cenozoic. PEAT expeditions will accomplish this by drilling at the paleoposition of the equator at successive crustal ages on the Pacific Plate. This will allow for a clearer understanding of how Earth was able to maintain very warm climates, relative to the 20th century, even though solar radiation received at Earth’s surface has remained nearly constant for the last 55 million years.
Unlike ice cores, which contain only a million years of history from glacial locations, ocean sediments are globally distributed and are key to understanding the evolution of the oceans and climate. When collected through scientific ocean drilling, these sediments provide remarkably precise records of changing climate conditions over the past 100 million years.
The JOIDES Resolution is the U.S. research vessel for exploring and monitoring the sub-seafloor; it operates as part of the international Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The U.S. Implementing Organization (USIO) for IODP is comprised of Texas A&M University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. Already a 20-year workhorse on behalf of scientific ocean drilling, the JOIDES Resolution (JR, for short) has been completely refurbished. The JR is now poised to help IODP continue to push the edge of the envelope of science by collecting unique sub-seafloor samples and data that would otherwise remain out of reach to researchers.
Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas [at] nsf [dot] gov
Jon Corsiglia, Consortium for Ocean Leadership (202) 232-3900 jcorsiglia [at] oceanleadership [dot] org
Related Websites
IODP Expeditions 320 & 321: Pacific Equatorial Age Transect: http://iodp.tamu.edu/scienceops/expeditions/equatorial_pacific.html
Ocean Research Officials Hail Completion of Modernization for U.S. Scientific Ocean Drilling Vessel: http://www.oceanleadership.org/2009/01/23/ocean-research-officials-hail-completion-of-modernization-for-u-s-scientific-ocean-drilling-vessel/
