Kristine DeLong, PhD student (T. Quinn and G. Mitchum, advisors)
College of Marine Science
, University of South Florida
kdelong@marine.usf.edu
Education
B.S., University of South Florida, Mechanical Engineering, 1991
Masters of Science, University of South Florida, Marine Science, 2006
Research Interests
The tropical oceans of the world serve as the heat engine that
drives global atmospheric circulation and influence climate
phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, which have global and
societal impacts. In order to investigate how tropical oceans vary
over time, climate records such as SST and SSS are needed to
constrain tropical variations. In regions where no instrumental
records are available, massive corals serve as proxy recorders of
climate. Massive coral skeletons are composed of CaCO3 and have
annual density bands, similar to tree-rings, and the coral skeletal
geochemistry records variations in SST and SSS. Using
geochemical analytical tools such as Stable Isotope Ratio Mass
Spectrometry and Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission
Spectrometry (ICP-OES), variations in oxygen isotopes and trace
elemental ratios (Sr/Ca) can be calibrate against instrumental
records to reconstruct SST and SSS variations. Because massive
corals are long-lived and fossil colonies are preserved in the
geological record, Paleoclimatologists can reconstruct past climate
on inter-annual to centennial time scales and address questions
concerning ENSO, decadal variability, cooling during the Little Ice
Age, and other climate phenomena.
My research uses an inter-disciplinary approach, combining
geology with chemistry and biology to address questions
concerning climate and testing their results against physical
constraints of the ocean-atmosphere system. Current and past
projects include:
Replication study of coral Sr/Ca records from New Caledonia, SW
Pacific Ocean, for the period 1900 to 1999;
Reconstructing SST and SSS variations in the SW tropical Pacific
over the past 350 years using coral geochemical records from New
Caledonia;
Investigating SST and SSS variations in the Tahiti, central tropical
Pacific, during the Holocene; and
Exploring multi-decadal to centennial scale climatic variations in
paleoclimatology records using time series analysis.
Papers & Presentations
DeLong, K.L., Quinn, T.M., Taylor, F. 2005. Sea Surface
Temperature Variability in the Southwest Tropical Pacific
Since1679 AD Derived From Coral Skeletal Geochemistry. Poster
2005 AGU Fall Meeting. (PDF, 3.4MB)
DeLong, K.L., Quinn, T.M., Taylor, F. 2006. Reconstructing 20th
Century SST Variability in the Southwest Pacific: A Replication
Study Using Multiple Coral Sr/Ca Records from New Caledonia.
Poster 2006 AGU Fall Meeting.
DeLong, K.L., Quinn, T.M., Taylor, F. 2007. Reconstructing 20th
Century SST Variability in the Southwest Pacific: A Replication
Study Using Multiple Coral Sr/Ca Records from New Caledonia.
Paper submitted to Paleoceanography.