Long records of climate in southern Australasia

Australia, being an arid continent, suffers from a lack of long, well-dated records that can accurately document climate change. Most of our records are fragmentary, like lake shorelines or moraines, or can be difficult to decipher, like pollen records. Our approach has been to turn to the oceans that surround Australia and New Zealand to provide quality records of climate change through time. Marine records are more continuous, easier to date, and temperature change is easier to quantify. Additionally, wind and water transport evidence of changing climates from the continent into the ocean, to be preserved in these deep-sea sediments. The juxtaposition of continental and marine sediments provides a Rosetta Stone from which to interpret undated or ambiguous terrestrial records nearby.