Professor Alex Piotrowski
Degrees and honours
- PhD Columbia University, New York, USA.
- Masters Degree University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Awards and prizes
- Keynote Speaker, 2016 Goldschmidt Conference, Yokohama Japan
Biography
The primary thrust of my research is to understand the link between ocean circulation and climate over recent earth history. The global ocean overturning is an important component of the earth鈥檚 climate system because the deep ocean hosts a large reservoir of carbon dioxide that exchanges with the atmosphere on short timescales, and its circulation also transports heat across the face of the planet. I am specifically interested in reconstructing changes in deep water mass source and structure and determining how these are linked with changes in deep ocean nutrient contents and overturning rate.
My research group at Cambridge uses radiogenic isotopes, including those of Nd and Pb, and other geochemical tools, in marine sediment samples at globally distributed sites to gain a wider view of past ocean geochemistry. A number of my studies have used Nd isotopes to examine South Atlantic deep water sourcing changes during deglacial circulation changes (Piotrowski et al., 2004 EPSL), glacial鈥搃nterglacial transitions (Piotrowski et al., 2005, Science), and glacial millennial-scale variability (Piotrowski et al., 2008, EPSL). My research group is measuring Nd isotopes records at other key locations in the deep ocean, including the North Atlantic studies (Piotrowski et al., EPSL 2012; Elmore et al., 2010), deep Indian Ocean (Piotrowski et al., 2009, EPSL, Wilson et al., EPSL 2011), and Pacific (Elderfield et al. Science, 2012, Hu et al., EPSL in press).