Planktonic foraminifera – Geochemical variability, eddies and seasonality in the Mozambique Channel
Steinhardt, J. (2015). Planktonic foraminifera – Geochemical variability, eddies and seasonality in the Mozambique Channel. PhD Thesis. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789053831274. 284 pp. hdl.handle.net/1871/53242
Ocean circulation is generally considered as one of the main players in the climate system. How certain ocean current systems have varied over time has a profound impact on climateand also the future climate is expected to be strongly affected by changes in ocean circulation. Specific parts of the global ocean circulation have been suggested to play a key role for global climate and the Agulhas current is one of those. The Agulhas current is fuelled, amongst others, by eddies originating from the Mozambique Channel. Within this thesis, severalattempts are made to develop and calibrate potential proxies for the occurrence and intensity of eddies passing through Mozambique Channel. These eddy proxies are based on differences in the geochemical composition of foraminiferal shells from sediment traps, for which the link to eddy occurrence is known in real-time. As shown in chapter 2, other processes, such asseasonality, also impact the fluxes of different foraminiferal species during the year and hence the environmental conditions recorded in the chemistry of their shells. The reliability of theproxies suggested here, critically depends on the relative impact of the different processes on the annually integrated proxy signal and hence on the relative distribution of the differentspecies throughout the year.
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