Wed. May 27, 2015 2:15 PM - 3:00 PM 202 (2F)

Convener:*Ryuji Tada(Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Graduate School of Science, The Univeristy of Tokyo), Takeshi Nakagawa(Ritsumeikan University), Ken Ikehara(Institute of Geology and Geoinformation, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), Masanobu Yamamoto(Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University), Chair:Ryuji Tada(Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Graduate School of Science, The Univeristy of Tokyo)

With increasing awareness of human impact on global climate change, people pay more attention to the changes in spatial pattern, magnitude, and periodicity of climatic changes, as well as intensity and frequency of extreme weather, which are all relevant to near future regional-scale climatic changes and natural disasters. Having robust knowledge on magnitudes, frequencies, spatial patterns, and mechanisms of past climatic changes is a prerequisite to understand near future climatic changes. However, existing paleo-climatic records do not have sufficient spatio-temporal resolutions and age precision to address key questions. In addition, types of proxies as well as their precisions are variable and not inter-calibrated to each other. Recently, high-resolution absolute time scale back to 50 ka was established using varved sediments of Lake Suigetsu that enables us to reconstruct paleo-climatic changes in such high resolution as decadal or even annual. Likewise, continuous sediment records back to more than 2.5 Ma were recovered from the Sea of Japan by IODP Exp. 346, which has potential to provide a reference time scale for the entire Quaternary in East Asia-NW Pacific region. We aim to extend these reference time scales to paleo-observatory sites in East Asia-NW Pacific region using various stratigraphic correlation techniques and standardized protocols. The paleo-climate observatory network would allow us to interrogate causal links between components of the climate system.