A team of scientists, including those from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), have combined stalagmites and climate model simulations to reveal links between monsoon rains and tropical cyclones in Australia.
A team of scientists, including those from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), have combined stalagmites and climate model simulations to reveal links between monsoon rains and tropical cyclones in Australia.
This work, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, was published today in the journal Science Advances.
WHOI Assoc. Scientist Caroline Ummenhofer and MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Theo Carr co-authored the study, along with lead author Rhawn Denniston, professor of Geology at Cornell College and WHOI adjunct scientist, and colleagues from Iowa State University and the University of New Mexico.
The team reconstructed changes in monsoon rainfall over the last 1,500 years using the chemistry of stalagmites from a cave in the Australian tropics. The stalagmites were dated using the small amounts of radioactive isotopes they contain, and variations in monsoon rainfall were determined from changes in the stalagmites’ isotopes of oxygen.
Read more at: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Cape Range cave in Northwestern Australia. Changes in the isotopic composition of the stalagmites in Cape Range and the Kimberley region in northern Australia reflect rainfall over Australia from tropical cyclones and the monsoon. (Photo Credit: Darren Brooks /Australian Speleological Federation, Perth, Australia)
