Clumped isotope calibration data for lacustrine carbonates: A progress report

Abstract:

Our capacity to understand Earth’s environmental history is highly dependent on the accuracy of reconstructions of past climates. Lake sediments provide important archives of terrestrial climate change, and represent an important tool for reconstructing paleohydrology, paleoclimate, paleoenvironment, and paleoaltimetry. Unfortunately, while multiple methods for constraining marine temperature exist, quantitative terrestrial proxies are scarcer – tree rings, speleothems, and leaf margin analyses have all been used with varying degrees of accuracy. Clumped isotope thermometry has the potential to be a useful instrument for determining terrestrial climates: multiple studies have shown the fraction of ¹³C—¹⁸O bonds in carbonates is inversely related to the temperature at which the rocks formed. We have been measuring the abundance of ¹³C¹⁸O¹⁶O in the CO₂ produced by the dissolution of carbonate minerals in phosphoric acid in modern lake samples and comparing results to independently known estimates of lake water temperature. Here we discuss an extensive calibration dataset comprised of 132 analyses of 97 samples from 44 localities, including microbialites, tufas, and micrites endogenic carbonates, freshwater gastropods, bivalves, microbialites, and ooids.