7 September, 1.30pm, Amphithéâtre Pasteur, CEREGE Arbois
“Continental relative atmospheric humidity revealed by the triple isotopic composition of oxygen, water and plant silica”.”
Summary : While continental relative humidity is decreasing on a global scale across the continents, on a regional scale, predictions for the coming decades remain highly imprecise. Yet continental relative humidity is a key climatic parameter in the evolution of ecosystems. In this presentation, I will show how continental relative humidity controls plant transpiration; how changes in humidity are recorded by the triple isotopic composition of oxygen in water and silica in plants, which we are able to measure at CEREGE; why we are trying to reconstruct these changes over the last 3,000 years in intertropical Africa; and how this could enable us to better predict future changes in continental relative humidity and ecosystems in intertropical regions.
The presentation will be in French and will be available for streaming (http://streaming-a.osupytheas.fr/embed/live.html)