Research Projects

“Poleward and Weakened Westerlies during Pliocene Warmth” published in Nature

From May to July 2019, IODP Expedition 383 sailed in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean to drill sediment cores along the Chilean Margin and in the Central South Pacific. The main goal of the project is to study how the dynamics of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current affect the global climate system. Gisela sailed as co-chief scientist, and lead together with Frank Lamy, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the expedition.

From May to July 2019, Gisela sailed on RV Sonne to the Tasman Sea

Check out our exciting new records of how the fastest current in the world responded to past changes in climate:
"Five million years of Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength variability" published in Nature

Wind-blown dust alters the radiation budget of the atmosphere, provides essential micronutrients (like iron) to open ocean ecosystems, and can be used to investigate the strength and position of paleo-wind. We are interested in characterizing and understanding the natural variability of continental dust emissions and their impact on marine biogeochemical cycles and global climate.

Ice ages have waxed and waned for millions of years. So have volcanic eruptions, maybe, on roughly the same scale. Could the two processes be related? A team of Lamont-Doherty scientists (together with colleagues from Harvard, Penn State and Oxford University) traveled to the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the North East Pacific in the fall of 2014 aboard the R/V Atlantis to find out if under-sea volcanism varied on ice-age like cycles.

How unstable were the Antarctic Ice Sheets during warmer times in the past? When did the ice-sheet form in Greenland? How often has the Greenland ice sheet collapses since? Key questions like this are the core of the cosmogenic noble gas projects of WINGS (in collaboration with the Lamont Cosmo Group).