Dr. Elisabeth L. Sikes

The unifying theme in my work is carbon cycling. As a paleoceanographer, I am investigating circulation in the Southern Ocean to determine how this traps and releases CO2 from the deep ocean on glacial time scales. I also investigate past sea surface temperature changes in the oceans around New Zealand and Australia. On shorter timescales, I am investigating sources, pathways, and sinks of both terrestrial and marine carbon in modern environments with an eye to their interaction with coastal ocean acidification and changes related to climate change. To do this, I employ isotopic (13C, 18O, and 14C) and organic (biomarker, Uk37) geochemical techniques to answer these questions of sea surface temperature and global circulation change.