The green past of the Saharo-Arabian Desert: Isotope analyses of limestone cave deposits reveal recurrent humid intervals in the #SaharoArabianDesert over the last eight million years / International research project led by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry with participation of #MainzUniversity and Goethe University Frankfurt, supported by the Saudi Heritage Commission and the Ministry of Culture 👉 https://press.uni-mainz.de/the-green-past-of-the-saharo-arabian-desert/

#paleoclimate #hydroclimate #geochemistry #stalagmites #speleothems

Always a good day when friends have a good day! Out today in NATURE (!) from Monika Markowska - 8 million year record of recurrent humid phases in Arabia.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08859-6

#Quaternary #QuaternaryScience #speleothem #speleothems #palaeoclimate

#PaperClub is back for the start of 2025, and we're kicking off with Patterson et al (2024), who present a PCP-corrected stalagmite d18O record from Vietnam, spanning 45-4 ka. Interesting paper, and the whole 'PCP impacts on d18O' thing has been getting quite a lot of airtime in recent years. Hopefully without sounding like a hater, I remain a bit skeptical. In this instance, the model assumptions include a feeding stalactite drip rate of 1 drip/second, which seems too high for LGM (where PCP effect on the stal was greatest). For stalactite PCP to be recorded in a stalagmite, there must not be sufficient residence time for re-equilibration to occur. I would love to see a sensitivity test of the drip rate on the model.

Growth rates during the 'peak PCP' period were also extremely low (<5 um/yr), which suggests to me that growth was likely not continuous over the period. d18O vals were high, I assume there was greater opportunity for disequilibrium to drive the signal rather than PCP?

Anyway, I'm definitely no expert in d18O kinetics, and I'm looking forward to hearing the opinions of the group, and anyone else who has read the paper :) I am really happy to be wrong about this, as there are lots of clever people on the paper who know more than me about this stuff!

#Paleoclimate #Speleothems #speleology
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53422-y

Box of rocks arrived for me today 😍 we will be taking these beauties to the Aus Synchrotron next month to get an idea if they might be suitable for #palaeofire research. Happily, these were collected by a friend of mine for her PhD, which means a potential collaboration with a friend (yay!), and the reuse of old samples rather than collecting new (double yay!).

#speleothems #palaeoclimate

We were very kindly invited to write a communication piece for #AGUPubs Eos magazine, to go along with our recent review paper. If you'd like a quick overview on using #speleothems for #palaeofire research, look no further!

https://eos.org/editors-vox/using-cave-formations-to-investigate-ancient-wildfires

#SciComm #AcWri #paleofire @Andbaker @unsw

Woohoo it's paper publishing day! So pleased to have this article out in the light of day, and published #OpenAccess in Reviews of Geophysics. We give you everything we know about #speleothems as #palaeofire archives, including tips on sample and site selection, and appropriate methods. We then sweeten the deal with four case studies.

This one was a huge team effort, and could not have been written without the involvement of all the co-authors (👋 @Andbaker).

#AcWri #Academia