The work of the MITRA project is important for four key reasons. First is because SW Asia (Eastern Turkey, Iraq and Iran) is a region becoming increasingly vulnerable to extreme hydroclimate fluctuations, with potentially catastrophic effects. For example, both drought (low rainfall) and inundation (high rainfall) events can affect regional water resources, agriculture, and energy production across vast geographical regions, and last for months to years. Second, the climate in SW Asia is influenced by two major climate systems: (1) the North Atlantic/Siberian pressure system in winter, and (2) the Indian monsoon in summer. However, it is unclear how these systems interacted further into the past, and how these interactions influenced regional climate patterns. Third, three of the most fundamental transformations in human history also took place in SW Asia: the rise of agriculture, emergence of advanced complex societies, and the development of the first cities, states and empires. Thus, there remains much for us to learn about the extent to which both climatic and environmental conditions contributed to these profound socio-cultural transformations. And finally, SW Asia is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world due to population growth, overexploitation of aquifers, deteriorating water quality, rationed water supply, suboptimal irrigation services, and climate change. Combined with existing regional socio-economic and political tensions, the urgent need to understand drought dynamics and the factors responsible for hydroclimatic fluctuations in the past, present and future grows increasingly stronger year-on-year.
Under the MITRA project, a team of scientists based in Switzerland and France will develop a detailed network of paleoclimate reconstructions from speleothems, lake/wetland and marine sediments sampled; along a ~2000 km-long transect stretching from Eastern Turkey to the Persian Gulf, and covering the past ~11,500 years. The purpose of these reconstructions will be to document variations in regional climate and environmental conditions in unprecedented detail, which will be subsequently used to test and validate state-of-the-art regional climate model simulations.
The scope of the MITRA project is orientated around four primary, deliverable (D) goals:
(D1) Hydroclimate – to reconstruct decadal-to-millennial-scale precipitation variations using stalagmites (cave deposits) and lacustrine sediments
(D2) Environment – to disentangle the impacts of climate and human activity on ecosystems in SW Asia through the analysis of lake and marine sediment records.
(D3) Climate Dynamics – to identify the mechanistic drivers of short and long-term climate oscillations in SW Asia through climate modelling and data-model comparisons.
(D4) Synthesis – to evaluate ecological resilience to abrupt and persistent hydroclimate stress, and produce a robust framework for identifying and establishing causal relationships between climate, environmental resources, and societies in SW Asia during the Holocene.
To achieve the objectives of MITRA Deliverables 1-3, we will employ different Tasks (T) within each work package:
WP1: SPELEOTHEMS
Task 1.1 – Uranium-Thorium Dating (230Th-dating)
Task 1.2 – Annual layer thickness (ALT) and Petrography
Task 1.3 – Oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotopes of speleothem calcite
Task 1.4 – Hydrogen and oxygen isotope values of speleothem fluid inclusion water (δ2H and δ18O)
Task 1.5 – Trace elements (TE) in speleothem calcite
Task 1.6 – Strontium isotopes in speleothems: Strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr)
WP 2 – LACUSTRINE SEDIMENTS
Task 2.1 – 14C dating of sediments
Task 2.2 – Fossil pollen and NPP analysis
Task 2.3 – Ostracod analysis
Task 2.4 – Oxygen and carbon isotopes of lake sediments
Task 2.5 – Sedimentological & lithostratigraphic analysis
Task 2.6 – Paleo-magnetism of sediments
Task 2.7 – Trace elements, REEs and Sr-Nd-Pb isotopes
WP 3 – CLIMATE MODELLING
Task 3.1 – Large-scale circulation impacts
Task 3.2 – Natural and anthropogenic external forcing impacts
Task 3.3 – Process understanding of extreme drought conditions
Task 3.4 – Process understanding of heavy precipitation events
Task 3.5 – Generatio of a transient climate emulator on 10 km scale for SW Asia spanning 1500 BCE to 2100 CE