Research Projects

The southern Ocean plays a crucial role in Earth's climatic change during the Late Quaternary period by exchanging carbon between the deep sea and the atmosphere. This exchange is governed by two main mechanisms: biological and physical. The biological mechanism involves higher phytoplankton growth, mainly diatoms, which enabled carbon dioxide sequestration and lowered atmospheric concentrations. The physical mechanism involves increased sea ice cover and slow water ventilation, which prevented the release of deep-sea stored carbon. A third mechanism proposed by a study in the Indian sector of the southern Ocean suggests that changes in the meridional temperature gradient caused by Earth's obliquity could be the primary cause of lowered carbon dioxide during the glacial period. This hypothesis needs to be tested by understanding meridional temperature gradient changes in the Indian sector. The proposed project aims to reconstruct past ssTs, sea ice presence, diatom productivity, and nutrient concentrations to understand the role of the Indian sector in global climate change.