Pre-industrial sea-surface temperatures in the Australian region

This project aims at obtaining a series of high-resolution [decadal at least] records of sea-surface temperature at key locations around Australia, spanning the last millennium. This will extend data from the instrumental record to before the industrial revolution and going back to the past for periods which are known to have registered broad climatic oscillations in the northern hemisphere. We will analyse sediment cores using organic geochemical markers as proxies for sea-surface temperature reconstructions and radio-isotopes to date the sediments at high resolution. Palaeoecological studies of microfossils from the cores will inform us on changes in the upper part of the water column that coincide with sea-surface temperature changes.