Revised composite depth scale, Fe content and orbital tuning of Middle Eocene Climate Optimum samples from ODP Site 207-1260

A high-resolution stratigraphy is essential toward deciphering climate variability in detail and understanding causality arguments of events in earth history. Because the highly dynamic middle to late Eocene provides a suitable testing ground for carbon cycle models for a waning warm world, an accurate time scale is needed to decode climate-driving mechanisms. Here we present new results from ODP Site 1260 (Leg 207) which covers a unique expanded middle Eocene section (magnetochrons C18r to C20r, late Lutetian to early Bartonian) of the tropical western Atlantic including the chron C19r transient hyperthermal event and the Middle Eocene Climate Optimum (MECO). To establish a detailed cyclostratigraphy we acquired a distinctive iron intensity records by XRF scanning Site 1260 cores. We revise the shipboard composite section, establish a cyclostratigraphy and use the exceptional eccentricity modulated precession cycles for orbital tuning. The new astrochronology revises the age of magnetic polarity chrons C19n to C20n, validates the position of very long eccentricity minima at 40.2 and 43.0 Ma in the orbital solutions, and extends the Astronomically Tuned Geological Time Scale back to 44 Ma. For the first time the new data provide clear evidence for an orbital pacing of the chron C19r event and a likely involvement of the very long eccentricity cycle contributing to the evolution of the MECO.

Anthropogenic aerosol emissions and rainfall decline in South-West Australia - accompanying model results in NetCDF format

It is commonly understood that the observed decline in precipitation in South-West Australia during the 20th century is caused by anthropogenic factors. Candidates therefore are changes to large-scale atmospheric circulations due to global warming, extensive deforestation and anthropogenic aerosol emissions - all of which are effective on different spatial and temporal scales. This contribution focusses on the role of rapidly rising aerosol emissions from anthropogenic sources in South-West Australia around 1970. An analysis of historical longterm rainfall data of the Bureau of Meteorology shows that South-West Australia as a whole experienced a gradual decline in precipitation over the 20th century. However, on smaller scales and for the particular example of the Perth catchment area, a sudden drop in precipitation around 1970 is apparent. Modelling experiments at a convection-resolving resolution of 3.3km using the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model version 3.6.1 with the aerosol-aware Thompson-Eidhammer microphysics scheme are conducted for the period 1970-1974. A comparison of four runs with different prescribed aerosol emissions and without aerosol effects demonstrates that tripling the pre-1960s atmospheric CCN and IN concentrations can suppress precipitation by 2-9%, depending on the area and the season. This suggests that a combination of all three processes is required to account for the gradual decline in rainfall seen for greater South-West Australia and for the sudden drop observed in areas along the West Coast in the 1970s: changing atmospheric circulations, deforestation and anthropogenic aerosol emissions.