This month we welcomed Dr Pablo Cubillas Gonzalez to the Environmental team – you can see his bio here – Meet the Academic Team – TU Earth and Environment (tees.ac.uk)
Category: Earth Science
West African Palaeoclimate Project
In late 2022 Dr Lisa Baldini received a National Geographic Explorer grant to seek out stalagmite-bearing caves in western Africa for palaeorainfall reconstruction. Very little is know about long-term rainfall variability in this region of Africa and this information is critical for climate models aimed at predicting future change.
You might be interested in following the project on FB, ‘Western African Palaeoclimate Project’ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091358012423https://lnkd.in/enK-Anaa or the Twitter page https://twitter.com/westafricacaveshttps://lnkd.in/e6rfdNmd . Through both of these social media sites (with sprinkles of highlights on LinkedIn), regular project updates and highlights (field and lab) as well as offer some insights into climate change, how and why we reconstruct past climate using stalagmites, and all things cave/climate related! You’ll also be able to meet our team of wonderful project partners from the UK, Morocco, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon! Please feel free to share widely. Student followers are most welcome.
New Publication in Nature – TU Press Release
Date of historic volcanic eruption wrong by 130 years?
New research involving Teesside University has found the eruption date of a historic volcano is wrong by 130 years and that this miscalculation could impact our understanding of climate change.
The study, published in leading journal Nature on Thursday, 6 July 2023, argues that the Laacher See volcanic eruption in Germany took place 12,880 years ago – 130 years after the date previously reported.
The eruption of the Laacher See volcano is one of central Europe’s largest eruptions over the past 100,000 years.
The research team believe that having the wrong date impacts the ability to evaluate natural climate change in the past, impacting how scientists predict future, human caused, climate change.
Dr Lisa Baldini, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science in Teesside University’s School of Health & Life Sciences, who co-authored the study, said: “A correct age for this eruption is critical because the volcanic material that was deposited across Europe during the event is used to date numerous important sedimentary archives of past climates.
“Getting the date wrong will impact on our ability to evaluate the drivers of natural climate change in the past, which is critical for developing models that accurately predict future, human-caused, climate change.”
The research team, led by Durham University and including scientists from Teesside University, University of Oxford, Royal Holloway University of London, and SYSTEMIQ Ltd, suggest that the eruption date may have been compromised by volcanic carbon.
They argue that volcanoes outgas carbon dioxide from the underlying magma chamber, which filters through the soil and is absorbed by any vegetation, including trees. This magmatic carbon dioxide has no radiocarbon in it, because it is ancient carbon that has been in the ground for millions of years. Incorporation of this dead carbon into the tree will produce a date which will be too old.
Professor James Baldini, of Durham University, who led the study, said: “Our new study notes that the recent date for the eruption does not consider dead carbon which is emitted by the volcano and is absorbed by trees. Therefore, the trees used in the Reinig et al. were contaminated by this volcanic carbon, producing an age that was around 130 years too old.”
“This perspective is supported by the presence of a very large sulphur spike found in the Greenland ice sheet with all the characteristics of the Laacher See eruption, dated 130 years after the new Reinig et al. date.
“The eruption, therefore, is still a viable trigger for the Younger Dryas Event.”
The Laacher See volcanic eruption was similar in size to the cataclysmic Mt Pinatubo eruption in 1991 (pictured).
The ash resulting from the eruption is widely used as a time marker in sedimentary sequences across Europe, so the timing of the eruption affects the reported timing of environmental change as reconstructed from these European lake cores.
Welcome new Lecturer: Dr Ernesto Saiz
This week we welcomed Dr Ernesto Saiz to the environmental team – you can see his bio here – Meet the Academic Team – TU Earth and Environment (tees.ac.uk)
Webinar review: Marine Litter
On Thursday 25 May 2023, members of TU Environment Research Group joined the Yorkshire Geological Society’s webinar featuring Professor Richard Thompson who gave a fascinating account of the global environmental challenges surrounding plastic litter. Professor Thompson OBE FRS was the first to coin the term microplastics in 2004 (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1094559) and he continues to dedicate his career to researching microplastics in the environment, their impact on marine biota, and identifying sustainable solutions to this increasingly urgent issue. For more on Richard and his research, please see his University of Plymouth staff page at https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/richard-thompson.
External speaker: Professor Phil James
On Thursday 18 May the TU Earth & Environment Research Group hosted external speaker, Professor Phil James, based in the Department of Engineering at Newcastle University.
Phil leads the Urban Observatory programme in Newcastle which is a multi-million pound investment in sensing infrastructure providing millions of observations about the city. According to Phil, his expertise and research interests lie in the fusion and integration of data for analytics and visualisation.
Phil’s brilliant and well-attended talk ‘Smart, sustainable cities: Challenges in new urban data and realising future cities for citizens’ focused on the wealth of data that the Urban Observatory programme has compiled over the past seven years, how it is used, and the challenges faced when dealing with large and, at times, sensitive data. Because the data that Phil’s team are collecting are applicable to a range of disciplines (e.g., environmental management (air quality, noise), public health (social distancing during Covid), sustainable urban development, and big data), TU Earth & Environment extended the invitation to our TU colleagues in Engineering and Public Health.
You can read more about Phil and his research interests on his profile page https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/philipjames.html and the publicly available data and visualisation tool that Phil presented is available here https://newcastle.urbanobservatory.ac.uk/. If you intend to use the data, Phil has recommended accessing the Archive Data option.
Tenerife – An Island Under Pressure
Tenerife is certainly an island under many different types of pressure and this was evident in many forms during our week long field trip there. We experienced it’s vulnerability in the climate system first hand, as the intense sunlight and unseasonal heat (>30 C) reminded us that it is on the same latitude as the Sahara. Thankfully trade winds and cooler ocean currents from the North East usually keep the island relatively cool, whilst bringing much needed moisture to the north side. This supports the amazing laurel, brezal and pine forests, we enjoyed exploring these great habitats and also appreciating their importance in the hydrological system. Particularly with the desert conditions on the south side of the island!
Water management is one of the largest challenges that the island faces and we were expertly guided through one of the water galleria mines by our GeoTenerife expert (Heimaey). He explained how passages dug into the central mountain extracted water with minimal carbon footprint, after the footsteps of many hard working miners! The geological structure of the island dominates every day life there in many ways. Thankfully Rebecca Winstanley skillfully taught us about the many lava fields, volcanic deposits, associated hazards and more with her extensive knowledge of the island. Sadly many of the millions of tourists that visit Tenerife each year do not get the same opportunity to delve into the rich geography of such a varied island. We were lucky enough to enjoy the perspective of long term residents Ignacio, Alexi and Heimaey, who have seen the island change and evolve. There are many developments towards a more sustainable future here and we look forward to enjoy exploring more in the excellent company and hospitality of all those at GeoTenerife!
Looking for stalagmites
Recently, one of our PhD students – Fatai Ilesanmi has been on field trip.. Nigeria Field Expedition in the month of March and April 2023
Nigeria National Geographic expedition phase 1. This is a caving expedition to identify and map stalagmite-bearing caves in Nigeria (initial reconnaissance expedition).
The photograph shows Fatai exploring Itankpini cave and looking for stalagmites in hiding entrances
External Speaker: Professor Mike Rogerson – When and Why does it rain in the Sahara?
On Monday, 24th April 2023, our TU Earth & Environment Group welcomed guest speaker, Professor Mike Rogerson of Northumbria University whose talk entitled ‘When and Why does it rain in the Sahara? (on orbital timescales)’ addressed his ongoing NERC-funded stalagmite palaeoclimate research in Tunisia and Libya.
According to Mike, the Greening of the Sahara which entails conversion of large, currently hyperarid areas into grassland during warm phases of the northern hemisphere, is one of the most spectacular examples of past climate change we have. Previous studies have revealed that the Sahara was not always the sun soaked hyperarid landscape with iconic rolling sand dunes that much of it is today. Instead, there is evidence that it was once much greener.
Future changes in Earth’s hydroclimate under greenhouse gas forcing are notoriously difficult to predict yet people living in global drylands such as along the desert margins of the Sahara, are incredibly vulnerable to changing water availability and at risk of acute humanitarian crises under human caused climate change.
Climate models used to predict future change over large parts of African and West Asian dryzones tend not to ‘converge’ which means that different climate models subject to the same climate forcings will give different answers as to whether the region will be wetter or drier in the future. Globally, models seem to predict that wet regions will get wetter and dry regions will get drier but how accurate is this? Also, according to Mike, this pattern does not match our understanding of the Sahara under previous warm periods such as the mid-Holocene around 5000 years ago when a greener Sahara prevailed.
Mike is leading a large team of researchers from the UK, Tunisia, Libya, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, to achieve a step-change in the confidence of climate forecasts for the northern margin of the Sahara by examining the representation of rainfall in Tunisia and Libya general circulation models, and testing how consistent this representation is with new records of rainfall built from stalagmites from Tunisian and Libyan caves. Cave stalagmites preserve a record of past temperature and rainfall in their mineral chemistry as they grow. Depending on their size and growth rate, they have the potential to give us insight into seasonal scale climate variability many thousands of years into the past.
Mike gave an interesting and engaging talk that explained why this is such a difficult – and important – bit of climate science to solve, and provided us with an update on the team’s progress so far.
Mike directs research in Northumbria’s Geography and Environmental Sciences Department and has a wide range of research interests himself with a particular love for karst processes and landscapes. Mike and I have worked closely on several projects over recent years including my National Geographic Explorer project seeking to reconstruct West African Palaeoclimate and as founding members of ‘Karstaways’, a North England research collective of karst and cave researchers. You can learn more about Mike and his work here https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/r/michael-rogerson/.
written by Dr Lisa Baldini
1 kilometre under the surface: Researching organisms from extreme environment
MSc Microbiology students Orakan Jones and Nathalia Thompson with Drs Paul Dean and Jens Holtvoeth collected brines for extremophile research 1,000m below the surface in the Boulby salt mine.
In October, a team from Teesside University took part in the 10th annual field event on astrobiology, robotics, and planetary exploration (MINAR X), organised by the UKRI Underground Laboratory at the ICL salt mine at Boulby. Dr Jens Holtvoeth was joined by Dr Paul Dean and two microbiology MSc students, Orakan Jones and Nathalia Thompson to travel 1.000 meters down the shaft and underneath the North Sea, together with scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Manchester, and Newcastle, the California Institute of Technology, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena).
The aim of our team was to collect samples of salt and brine for biomarker and DNA analyses to produce a geochemical fingerprint of fossil and living microbial communities and to gain information on cellular adaptation mechanisms of halophile microorganisms to the extreme conditions. This will help to interpret fossil biomarker distributions found in the salt with regard to environmental conditions at the fringes of the evaporating Zechstein Sea about 250 million years ago.
While the team were able to collect brines from a disused part of the mine, aptly named Billingham Bath, the collection of salt samples by coring the salt with sterilised drill bits had to be postponed due to a technical fault of the corer. Thus, the team is looking forward to going down the shaft later this semester, again.