Dr. Robin Edwards

Summary

Ireland is a small island on the edge of a large ocean. Atlantic changes arguably impact Ireland more than any other country. For example, in 2015, when the record global surface temperatures were reached, Ireland had below average temperatures due to a cool Atlantic. Irish temperatures bucking the trend in 2015 brings sharp focus to the fact that understanding Ireland's place in a changing climate requires understanding the changing Atlantic. Ireland's marine territory is ten times larger than her terrestrial territory. The government of Ireland has set an ambitious target of doubling Ireland's blue economic output by 2030. Underpinning this growth is a research strategy that allows sustainable, safe, and managed exploitation of the marine environment. A necessary step to facilitate this is to understand the changing physical environment on the eastern seaboard of the Atlantic in a changing climate. We have identified three areas of physical oceanography and climate research where impactful and strategically important progress can be made. These areas are: understanding Atlantic variability and its connection to the Irish shelf (WP1); advancing knowledge of Irish sea level change in an Atlantic context (WP2); and development of predictive capacity on decadal timescales for planning and management (WP3). All three strands will be integrated in WP4 to provide comprehensive, stakeholder-focused reports. The workpackages link to four high level objectives: (O1) improve understanding of the changing Atlantic and its impacts on Ireland and Irish waters; (O2) build capacity and capability in physical oceanography and climate research in key areas to enable greater participation in future international efforts; (O3) exploit the existing marine observations and contribute to international frameworks for observing the oceans; and (O4) delivery of climate information to key stakeholders to understand and manage our place in a changing climate on the edge of a changing ocean.

Funding Agency

Marine Institute

Programme

Oceans in a changing climate

Summary

It is widely accepted that sea level will rise in the future as a result of global warming and the accompanying melting of global ice and thermal extension. However, the responses of the oceans (changes in ocean circulation, temperature and sea level) due to these changes are still not fully understood. For this reason, predictive models of future changes are associated with significant uncertainties. One way to improve these models is a better understanding of how conditions have varied in the past. One aspect to be considered are millennial-scale abrupt climate changes which can be triggered by ice sheet collapses. This is potentially important since the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have exhibited such dynamics behaviour in the last decade. The evolution and demise of the British Irish Ice Sheet is a useful analogue for the behaviour of a marine-based ice sheet in a warming world. The sediments accumulating off the west coast of Ireland, along the Porcupine Bank and in the adjacent Rockall Trough, have provided important insights into this evolution. The aim of this project will be to produce high resolution records of ocean circulation and ice sheet changes from selected deepwater cores recovered from the slope deposits of Porcupine Bank. A multi-proxy approach is applied where data from planktonic/benthic foraminifera (census and stable isotopes) and marine sedimentology (laser granulometry and sortable silt) are combined to explore millennial-scale changes in sea surface temperatures, water mass characteristics, ocean circulation/current velocity, phases of ice rafting and sediment flux. The cores will be dated by the means of foraminifera-based stable isotope event stratigraphy, 14C measurements of foraminifera and tephrochronology.

Funding Agency

Irish Research Council

Programme

Postgraduate Scholarship

Project Type

PhD (€95 500)

Summary

Relative sea-level (RSL) histories provide unique insights into the topical issues of ice sheet response to climate change and future sea-level rise. Data from Ireland are particularly instructive due to their location at the former limit of a major ice sheet. Despite their significance, Irish RSL histories are contested and the debate largely characterised by polarised views that reflect methodological and discipline-related divisions. This project will cross this boundary by integrating approaches from both sides of the methodological divide to test the validity of two competing and mutually exclusive views of RSL change since the last glacial maximum (LGM).

Funding Agency

SFI (€138 216)

Programme

RFP

Project Type

4 yr PhD

Summary

This project will analyse existing box and short gravity cores to examine the nature of the palaeoceanographic record they contain with a specific focus on their potential for elucidating multi-centennial to millennial scale, climate-related processes. The coring sites are located within the sensitive NE Atlantic region which has a proven track-record for furnishing high-quality palaeoceanographic records of Late Quaternary climate change. This project will target the last glacial to Holocene sequences in this region with the following objectives: 1. Catalogue and characterise the recent (Holocene) foraminiferal assemblages of the sampling sites and their relationship to key oceanographic variables (e.g. temperature, salinity, water depth etc); 2. Examine changes in these and associated parameters through time by reference to down-core variation in foraminiferal assemblages (benthic and planktonic), and their stable isotopic signatures (ä18O; ä13C); 3. Establish core chronologies and sedimentation rates via a dating programme including AMS radiocarbon analysis of microfossils coupled with stable isotope foraminiferal tuning to Greenland ice core record(s), augmented where appropriate by tephrochronology 4. Assess the evidence for millennial to sub-millennial palaeoceanographic changes from combined sedimentological, microfossil and geochronological analysis, and explore their significance for the current understanding of climate-cryosphere-ocean linkages in the N. Atlantic.

Funding Agency

GSI & MI (€ 29 625)

Programme

INFOMAR Strand 3

Project Type

Basic research

Summary

Relative sea-level (RSL) data from western Ireland can provide critical constraints on geophysical models seeking to describe the interplay between dynamic ice sheet responses to climate change, isostatic rebound and 'global' eustatic sea-level rise. Despite this, there is a virtual absence of reliable RSL data from large stretches of the Irish coastline and traditional reconstruction methodologies have failed to extract the required information even though there are thick sedimentary sequences in the region. This project will apply a new methodological approach to RSL reconstruction in Ireland to address this important knowledge gap. It will achieve this by answering the following research questions: (1) are carbon / nitrogen ratios (C/N) and carbon isotopes (ä13C) diagnostic tools for discriminating between inter-tidal and terrestrial sediments in western Ireland?; (2) can a composite geochemical and microfossil-based approach improve relative sea-level reconstructions in terms of both data quality (accuracy/precision) and availability (spatial/temporal distribution)?; (3) does a new glacial rebound model for Ireland reliably simulate RSL change within the Shannon estuary?

Funding Agency

IRCSET

Programme

Postgraduate Scholarship (€ 72 000)

Project Type

3 year PhD