Delia Oppo

Last updated
Delia Wanda Oppo
Alma materColumbia University
Scientific career
InstitutionsWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Thesis The nature, causes, and consequences of thermohaline circulation changes over the past 700,000 years : variations of δ¹³C in benthic and planktonic foraminifera  (1989)

Delia Wanda Oppo is an American scientist who works on paleoceanography where she focuses on past variations in water circulation and the subsequent impact on Earth's climate system. She was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2014.

Contents

Education and career

Oppo has a B.S. from the State University of New York at Albany (1981). [1] She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989 where she worked on changes in thermohaline circulation. [2] Following her Ph.D she started at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a postdoctoral scientist working with William Curry. [3] As of 2006, she is a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. [1]

In 2014, Oppo was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union who cited her "for her contributions toward understanding the causes of Earth’s climate variability and its link to ocean circulation and the hydrological cycle". [4]

Research

Oppo's research tracks past changes in ocean circulation, and the resulting impact of these changes on regional climate. Her research uses stable isotopes of carbon which are captured in the shells of foraminifera. [5] [6] [7] In the Atlantic Ocean, her research has examined changes in deep and intermediate water circulation, [8] [9] and climate variability in the North Atlantic. [10] [11] [12] Her research has revealed a weakening of the Gulf Stream, [13] which may impact weather patterns in the United States and Europe. [14] She has also investigated abrupt climate events in the past [15] and changes in the heat content of the ocean over the past 10,000 years, [16] research which shows that the ocean is warming faster than in the past. [17]

Selected publications

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Atlantic Current</span> Current of the Atlantic Ocean

The North Atlantic Current (NAC), also known as North Atlantic Drift and North Atlantic Sea Movement, is a powerful warm western boundary current within the Atlantic Ocean that extends the Gulf Stream northeastward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocean gyre</span> Any large system of circulating ocean surface currents

In oceanography, a gyre is any large system of ocean surface currents moving in a circular fashion driven by wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect; planetary vorticity, horizontal friction and vertical friction determine the circulatory patterns from the wind stress curl (torque).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dansgaard–Oeschger event</span> Rapid climate fluctuation in the last glacial period

A Dansgaard–Oeschger event, is a rapid climate fluctuation; such events occurred 25 times during the last glacial period. Some scientists say that the events occur quasi-periodically with a recurrence time being a multiple of 1,470 years, but this is debated. The comparable climate cyclicity during the Holocene is referred to as Bond events. Dansgaard–Oeschger refers to palaeoclimatologists Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Atlantic Gyre</span> Major circular system of ocean currents

The North Atlantic Gyre of the Atlantic Ocean is one of five great oceanic gyres. It is a circular ocean current, with offshoot eddies and sub-gyres, across the North Atlantic from the Intertropical Convergence Zone to the part south of Iceland, and from the east coasts of North America to the west coasts of Europe and Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heinrich event</span> Large groups of icebergs traverse the North Atlantic.

A Heinrich event is a natural phenomenon in which large groups of icebergs break off from the Laurentide ice sheet and traverse the Hudson Strait into the North Atlantic. First described by marine geologist Hartmut Heinrich, they occurred during five of the last seven glacial periods over the past 640,000 years. Heinrich events are particularly well documented for the last glacial period but notably absent from the penultimate glaciation. The icebergs contained rock mass that had been eroded by the glaciers, and as they melted, this material was dropped to the sea floor as ice rafted debris forming deposits called Heinrich layers.

Hartmut Heinrich is a German marine geologist and climatologist. Heinrich was Head of the Marine Physics Department at the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) in Hamburg until September 2017. He was actively involved in global Argo Ocean Observing Programme, environmental research and administration, and adaptation to climate change. In 1988 he described the suddenly occurring climate changes in the history of the Earth, which have since been named after him, Heinrich events.

Paleoceanography is the study of the history of the oceans in the geologic past with regard to circulation, chemistry, biology, geology and patterns of sedimentation and biological productivity. Paleoceanographic studies using environment models and different proxies enable the scientific community to assess the role of the oceanic processes in the global climate by the re-construction of past climate at various intervals. Paleoceanographic research is also intimately tied to paleoclimatology.

The environmental isotopes are a subset of isotopes, both stable and radioactive, which are the object of isotope geochemistry. They are primarily used as tracers to see how things move around within the ocean-atmosphere system, within terrestrial biomes, within the Earth's surface, and between these broad domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic meridional overturning circulation</span> System of surface and deep currents in the Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the main ocean current system in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a component of Earth's ocean circulation system and plays an important role in the climate system. The AMOC includes Atlantic currents at the surface and at great depths that are driven by changes in weather, temperature and salinity. Those currents comprise half of the global thermohaline circulation that includes the flow of major ocean currents, the other half being the Southern Ocean overturning circulation.

In geochemistry, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography δ18O or delta-O-18 is a measure of the deviation in ratio of stable isotopes oxygen-18 (18O) and oxygen-16 (16O). It is commonly used as a measure of the temperature of precipitation, as a measure of groundwater/mineral interactions, and as an indicator of processes that show isotopic fractionation, like methanogenesis. In paleosciences, 18O:16O data from corals, foraminifera and ice cores are used as a proxy for temperature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic multidecadal oscillation</span> Climate cycle that affects the surface temperature of the North Atlantic

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), also known as Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), is the theorized variability of the sea surface temperature (SST) of the North Atlantic Ocean on the timescale of several decades.

Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Geophysical Union. It publishes original research articles dealing with all aspects of understanding and reconstructing Earth's past climate and environments from the Precambrian to modern analogs. Until the first of January 2018 the name of the journal was Paleoceanography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Axel Timmermann</span> German climate physicist and oceanographer

Axel Timmermann is a German climate physicist and oceanographer with an interest in climate dynamics, human migration, dynamical systems' analysis, ice-sheet modeling and sea level. He served a co-author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and a lead author of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. His research has been cited over 18,000 times and has an h-index of 70 and i10-index of 161. In 2017, he became a Distinguished Professor at Pusan National University and the founding Director of the Institute for Basic Science Center for Climate Physics. In December 2018, the Center began to utilize a 1.43-petaflop Cray XC50 supercomputer, named Aleph, for climate physics research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amelia E. Shevenell</span> American marine geologist

Amelia E. Shevenell is an American marine geologist who specializes in high-latitude paleoclimatology and paleoceanography. She is currently a Professor in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She has made notable contributions to understanding the history of the Antarctic ice sheets and published in high-impact journals and, as a result, was awarded full membership of Sigma Xi. She has a long record of participation in international ocean drilling programs and has served in leadership positions of these organizations. Shevenell served as the elected Geological Oceanography Council Member for The Oceanography Society (2019-2021).

Ana Ravelo is a paleoceanographer known for her research on tropical oceans. She is a professor at the University of California Santa Cruz and was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2012.

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz is a paleoceanographer known for her research on reconstructing changes in ocean circulation over the last 100,000 years.

Sidney Hemming is an analytical geochemist known for her work documenting Earth's history through analysis of sediments and sedimentary rocks. She is a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University.

Zanna Chase is an ocean-going professor of chemical oceanography and paleoceanography at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Science, University of Tasmania, Australia. She has undertaken over 20 voyages on research vessels, and her areas of expertise are Antarctic paleoclimate, marine carbon cycle, radionuclides in the ocean, sediment geochemistry, paleoceanography, and marine biogeochemistry. In 2013 she was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Dr. Delia Oppo" . Retrieved 2021-09-12.
  2. ↑ Oppo, Delia Wanda (1989). The nature, causes, and consequences of thermohaline circulation changes over the past 700,000 years: variations of [delta]¹³C in benthic and planktonic foraminifera (Thesis). OCLC   508575003.
  3. ↑ "CV for Delia Oppo" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-09-12. Retrieved September 12, 2021.
  4. 1 2 "Oppo". Honors Program. Retrieved 2021-09-12.
  5. ↑ Raymo, M.E.; Ruddiman, W.F.; Shackleton, N.J.; Oppo, D.W. (1990-03-01). "Evolution of Atlantic-Pacific δ13C gradients over the last 2.5 m.y." Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 97 (3–4): 353–368. Bibcode:1990E&PSL..97..353R. doi:10.1016/0012-821X(90)90051-X. ISSN   0012-821X.
  6. ↑ Oppo, D. W.; Fairbanks, R. G.; Gordon, A. L.; Shackleton, N. J. (1990). "Late Pleistocene Southern Ocean δ13C variability". Paleoceanography. 5 (1): 43–54. Bibcode:1990PalOc...5...43O. doi:10.1029/PA005i001p00043. ISSN   1944-9186.
  7. ↑ Curry, W. B.; Oppo, D. W. (2005). "Glacial water mass geometry and the distribution of δ13C of ΣCO2 in the western Atlantic Ocean". Paleoceanography. 20 (1): n/a. Bibcode:2005PalOc..20.1017C. doi:10.1029/2004PA001021. hdl: 1912/3432 . ISSN   1944-9186.
  8. ↑ Oppo, Delia W.; Fairbanks, Richard G. (1987-11-01). "Variability in the deep and intermediate water circulation of the Atlantic Ocean during the past 25,000 years: Northern Hemisphere modulation of the Southern Ocean". Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 86 (1): 1–15. Bibcode:1987E&PSL..86....1O. doi: 10.1016/0012-821X(87)90183-X . ISSN   0012-821X.
  9. ↑ Oppo, D. W.; Lehman, S. J. (1993-02-19). "Mid-Depth Circulation of the Subpolar North Atlantic During the Last Glacial Maximum". Science. 259 (5098): 1148–1152. Bibcode:1993Sci...259.1148O. doi:10.1126/science.259.5098.1148. PMID   17794395. S2CID   23996710.
  10. ↑ McManus, Jerry F.; Oppo, Delia W.; Cullen, James L. (1999-02-12). "A 0.5-Million-Year Record of Millennial-Scale Climate Variability in the North Atlantic". Science. 283 (5404): 971–975. doi:10.1126/science.283.5404.971. PMID   9974387.
  11. ↑ Oppo, Delia W.; Keigwin, Lloyd D.; McManus, Jerry F.; Cullen, James L. (2001). "Persistent suborbital climate variability in marine isotope stage 5 and termination II". Paleoceanography. 16 (3): 280–292. Bibcode:2001PalOc..16..280O. doi: 10.1029/2000PA000527 . ISSN   1944-9186.
  12. ↑ Oppo, Delia W.; McManus, Jerry F.; Cullen, James L. (2006-12-01). "Evolution and demise of the Last Interglacial warmth in the subpolar North Atlantic". Quaternary Science Reviews. 25 (23–24): 3268–3277. Bibcode:2006QSRv...25.3268O. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2006.07.006. ISSN   0277-3791.
  13. ↑ Thornalley, David J. R.; Oppo, Delia W.; Ortega, Pablo; Robson, Jon I.; Brierley, Chris M.; Davis, Renee; Hall, Ian R.; Moffa-Sanchez, Paola; Rose, Neil L.; Spooner, Peter T.; Yashayaev, Igor (2018). "Anomalously weak Labrador Sea convection and Atlantic overturning during the past 150 years". Nature. 556 (7700): 227–230. Bibcode:2018Natur.556..227T. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0007-4. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   29643484. S2CID   4771341.
  14. ↑ "Gulf Stream is weakest its been in 1,600 years, study says". UPI. Retrieved 2021-09-14.
  15. ↑ Oppo, D. W.; McManus, J. F.; Cullen, J. L. (1998-02-27). "Abrupt Climate Events 500,000 to 340,000 Years Ago: Evidence from Subpolar North Atlantic Sediments". Science. 279 (5355): 1335–1338. Bibcode:1998Sci...279.1335O. doi:10.1126/science.279.5355.1335. PMID   9478890.
  16. ↑ Rosenthal, Yair; Linsley, Braddock K.; Oppo, Delia W. (2013-11-01). "Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years". Science. 342 (6158): 617–621. Bibcode:2013Sci...342..617R. doi:10.1126/science.1240837. PMID   24179224. S2CID   140727975.
  17. ↑ "The Pacific Ocean is now warming 15 times faster than it used to". Grist. 2013-10-31. Retrieved 2021-09-14.
  18. ↑ "Cesare Emiliani Lecture | AGU". www.agu.org. Retrieved 2021-09-12.
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