Interview series: Dr Haidee Cadd

By Dr Annie Lau and Dr Lynda Petherick We are delighted to have Dr Haidee Cadd, research associate at the University of New South Wales, as the first interviewee in this new series. 1. Can you tell us about yourself, your research interest, and your career path? I am currently a post-doctoral research associate working…

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ECR takeover! (New blog)

We are transforming the AQUA blog into an ECR blog. To kick off this refurbished blog, we will be interviewing AQUA researchers to know more about each other’s research, science journey, and life outside work. Do you want to be interviewed? Contact us to chat more! http://aqua.org.au/blogs/ecr-blog/

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Was the exodus of Homo sapiens out of Africa paced by orbital cycles?

by Ignacio Jara It is now widely accepted that anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged in Africa around 200 ka (ka=thousands of years before the present), as evidenced by now-classic hominid sites in eastern Africa and supported by genetic variations among modern populations. Despite the unquestioned African origin of our species, the time when modern…

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Blog 15: Two weeks in Patagonia – A fieldwork diary

By Ignacio Jara 26 January It is somewhat symbolic that the initial stop of my field season in Chile is the very same place where, one year ago, Brent Alloway and I finished Victoria University, Wellington, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences first international field trip with a traditional Patagonian asado (spit barbeque)… but…

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Blog 10: Tree rings and ENSO

By Ignacio Jara Since the 1980’s a huge amount of time and effort has been put to build a climate-sensitive tree-ring chronology for New Zealand. A noteworthy achievement of this scientific effort was the publication in 2006 of two independent tree-ring chronologies, a 2,300-year record from Silver Pine (Lagarostrobos colensoi) and a 3,700-year chronology from…

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Blog 9: Rapid weathering and erosion of the NZ Southern Alps

By Ignacio Jara and Helen Bostock The debate about the role the Southern Alps (New Zealand) uplifting to offset global climate change has experienced a recent renewal with the publication of a couple of new articles. According to the Uplifting Theory, over geological time the tectonic erection of large mountain systems has been associated with…

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Blog 8: Global volcanism linked to late-Quaternary deglaciations

By Ignacio A. Jara It has been widely documented that volcanic aerosols can alter the radiative balance of the atmosphere, producing measurable temperature depressions following large explosive eruptions. Perhaps the most renowned of these cases is the eruption of the mount Tambora in Indonesia, which in 1815 caused a decline of 0.5°C in the Northern…

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Blog 7: Dust deposition in the Southern Ocean

By Ignacio A. Jara and Helen Bostock Terrestrial dust is important to the climate system not only because it may alter the solar radiative balance of the earth, but also because it supplies the oceans with key iron (Fe), a limiting micronutrient for phytoplankton productivity in the Southern Ocean. The “Iron Hypothesis” was first proposed…

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