3 minute read
Research
Dr. Sujata Murty, an Associate Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, answers questions about her oceanic research. What are some of the main objectives of your project?
My research involves using corals as archives or recorders of past climate variability. Corals are amazing climate archives because they grow continuously for hundreds of years, incorporating characteristics of their surrounding ocean environment as they grow, such as temperature, ocean salinity, ocean circulation, and pollution. Corals are also a lot like tree rings, growing annual density bands that we can visualize by taking an x-ray of the coral and counting the bands/years back through time. The fast growth and banding patterns of corals together allow us to get records of monthly changes in climate and environmental Sujata Murty assists with conditions and compare summer/winter or wet/dry monsoon extracting a coral core piece from
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the underwater drill in Micronesia
seasons through time! This is extremely important in the IndoPacific region, where 2/3 of the global population is impacted by the Asian Monsoon.
The objectives of my research are to 1) use corals from the Indo-Pacific to reconstruct ocean temperature, salinity, circulation, and precipitation over the past few hundred years and, 2) synthesize these records with ocean and climate models to understand what’s driving the variability. Doing so allows us to better understand past changes in climate, which can improve our understanding and prediction of future changes in a warming world. Right now, I’m working on corals from the Indonesian Seas, central Indian Ocean and Red Sea to understand how climate influences the distribution of heat and freshwater in the Indian Ocean (one of our most understudied tropical ocean regions). What made you interested in researching this topic? I’ve always been mesmerized by the ocean, having grown up in Wisconsin. However, it was really when I took a class in college focused on the biology, geology and politics of coral reefs that my love for coral reef regions took off. I decided I wanted a career where I would get to SCUBA dive and visit reef regions, which I still get to do on occasion to collect my coral samples! After that class I started pursuing summer and winter research internships with coral scientists and happened to get involved with coral paleoclimate research early on. I fell in love with the project and knew this is what I wanted to pursue for my career. My Info-Pacific focus stems from getting my Ph.D. in Singapore where I had fantastic opportunities to study Southeast Asian climate and ocean systems. Research
What were the main outcomes of the project?
This project is still ongoing and has many sub-parts to it. One of the main findings from my early Red Sea work was that some of the differences between coral reconstructions may be related to the temperature regime the coral lives in and is adapted to. In the Indonesian Seas, my work highlighted the importance of the East Asian Monsoon in modifying the transfer of heat and freshwater from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean, which can have large impacts on both regional and global climate. This is of particular importance to the agrarian societies in Southeast Asia, who rely on understanding rainfall cycles to determine when to plant and harvest their crops.
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals do you feel are addressed most in your project?
This project fits well into Goal 13 (Climate Action) and Goal 14 (Life Below Water) given the focus of my research.
Sujata Murty and UAlbany undergraduate student Emma Saidenberg prepare a coral slab for an x-ray at Albany Med Is there anything else you want students to know about this
research? My research is very interdisciplinary, incorporating elements of chemistry, geology, paleoclimatology, oceanography, climate dynamics and even some biology. At the heart of it all, I’m a marine geochemist who gets to do a lot of field and lab work. Any student who is interested should stay on the lookout for future opportunities to work in my lab. I started working on similar research questions as a Sophomore, so my research is very accessible to undergraduate students.
I also want to highlight that in the spring semester I teach Sustainable Development: Energy and Resources, which further aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and Goal 12 (Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns). It’s a fun class that is going to incorporate a lot from the new LEED Platinum-certified ETEC building!
