Journal article
13C18O clumping in speleothems: Observations from natural caves and precipitation experiments
M Daëron, W Guo, J Eiler, D Genty, D Blamart, R Boch, R Drysdale, R Maire, K Wainer, G Zanchetta
Geochimica Et Cosmochimica Acta | Published : 2011
Abstract
The oxygen isotope composition of speleothems is an important proxy of continental paleoenvironments, because of its sensitivity to variations in cave temperature and drip water δ18O. Interpreting speleothem δ18O records in terms of absolute paleotemperatures and δ18O values of paleo-precipitation requires quantitative separation of the effects of these two parameters, and correcting for possible kinetic isotope fractionation associated with precipitation of calcite out of thermodynamic equilibrium. Carbonate clumped-isotope thermometry, based on measurements of Δ47 (a geochemical variable reflecting the statistical overabundance of 13C18O bonds in CO2 evolved from phosphoric acid digestion ..
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Grants
Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Versaveau family and Fritz Geissler for supporting this work and granting us access to the Villars and Katerloch caves. We also wish to thank Philippe Orengo (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement) for his help in the field and in setting up the synthetic precipitation experiments; and Julius Nouet (Universite de Paris-Sud) for X-ray diffraction analyses. We would also like to thank Hagit Affek and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, by the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, and by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through the Caltech Tectonics Observatory. MD is grateful to Jean-Philippe Avouac, the Tectonics Observatory and the Comissariat a l'Energie Atomique for post-doctoral grants. The Australian Research Council offered financial support (DP0773700; DP110102185) to the Corchia project, and the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers similarly supported this work through the ECLIPSE program. This is LSCE contribution #4470.