SISAL - Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis
Summary The Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis & Analysis (SISAL) working group will bring together speleothem scientists, speleothem-process modelers, statisticians and climate modelers to develop a global synthesis of speleothem isotopes that can be used both to explore past climate changes and in model evaluation.
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Launch |
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Synthesis |
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Feb 2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
Feb 2020 |
Photo

Participants at the group's 3rd workshop, in Morocco October 2018. Click to enlarge.
Speleothems are secondary cave deposits formed mostly from calcium carbonates (CaCO3). These climate archives are well distributed worldwide and thus they are not only valuable archives for regional climate but also for continental and inter-continental comparisons. Also,
The different types of measurements made on speleothems, including the stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon (δ18O, δ13C) and various trace elements, can be used to reconstruct past changes in the hydrological cycle as well as changes in atmospheric composition.Speleothems provide a unique opportunity for reconstructing climate drivers and change on various spatial and temporal scales during the last 21,000 years and beyond. These reconstructions can be used to evaluate state-of-the-art climate models that explicitly simulate water and carbon isotopes and/or atmospheric tracers such as dust. There are more than 400 published speleothem records; synthesis of these records, including assessment of the quality and reliability of individual records, is the goal of the SISAL (Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis) WG.
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CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE: Cave sites included in the first version of the SISAL database (purple circles) and sites identified for future releases of the database (green diamonds) on the Global Karst Aquifer Map (WOKAM project; Chen et al. 2017: https://www.un-igrac.org/resource/world-karst-aquifer-map-wokam). |
Learn more and participate
Subscribe to the SISAL mailing list here.
This group is open to anyone who is interested. To participate contact a member of the Steering Group.
Follow the working group on Twitter.
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Grotte de Villars, France. Image credit: Dr Andy Baker. |